werewolf – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 962: So many ways to lose people

The chief villain on Dark Shadows at the moment is a shape-shifting monster from beyond space and time who has decided the only shape he is interested in assuming is that of a tall young man. When he first appeared in this form, the monster asked people to “Call me Jabe.” Jabe is supposed to seize control of the Earth and eradicate the human race, but he couldn’t even get people to comply with this simple request. He’s been answering to “Jeb” for weeks now.

Several of Jabe’s followers, people who were completely down with the part about exterminating all humans, have found that his personality is just too much to put up with. Some of these are trying to destroy him. One of Jabe’s followers-turned-aspiring-assassins is a crazed sadist known only as Bruno. Yesterday, Bruno trapped Jabe with a werewolf, a creature to whom Jabe is vulnerable. Jabe escapes from the werewolf and confronts Bruno about his attempt to murder him.

Jabe is unconvinced by Bruno’s paper-thin excuses, but is shocked when Bruno tells him that Megan Todd, who was once Jabe’s foster mother and his most devoted follower, has been bitten by vampire Barnabas Collins and is now helping Barnabas in his own battle against Jabe. When Jabe finds a sleeping Megan calling out for Barnabas to summon her and sees the bite marks on her neck, he blames himself. Barnabas, too, used to be one of Jabe’s followers, and when he turned against him Jabe made him a vampire. He refuses to let Bruno kill Megan, and instead puts him in charge of keeping her away from Barnabas.

Jabe puts Bruno in charge of Megan. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Regular viewers would likely not have been surprised that Jabe survived yesterday’s closing cliffhanger- once he is gone, the current story will end, and they don’t yet have anything ready to go when that happens. But we would have expected Jabe to kill Bruno. That he not only does not do this, but keeps him around, shows just how precarious Jabe’s position has become. He is surrounded by enemies, many of whom know all of his secrets, and several of whom have supernatural powers. His grip on his few remaining allies is uncertain, and he does not seem to have the tactical sense to use his own powers effectively. So the writers have to slow the story way down to keep from running out of road.

Meanwhile, the werewolf is prowling through the woods. He meets his great-grandfather, Quentin Collins. It was a curse Quentin brought on himself that made him and his male descendants werewolves. The same magic spell that put Quentin’s own lycanthropy into remission immunized him against aging. The werewolf recognizes Quentin as one of his own kind and won’t attack him. When the sun comes up, the werewolf collapses and reverts to the form of Chris Jennings, who resembles his great-grandfather in that each of them is twenty-nine years old.

Quentin tells Chris that he wants to help him; Chris says that he ought to, since it’s his fault that he’s a werewolf. Quentin doesn’t have anything to say to that, nor is he willing to give Chris the help he asks for, which is immediate death. He asks Chris what he remembers; he says that the night before, Bruno was holding him prisoner, aided by the reanimated corpse of Sheriff Davenport. Chris wonders if he killed Bruno.

Quentin and Chris go to the old crypt where Bruno and Zombie Davenport had kept Chris. They find the shredded remains of Davenport’s defiled corpse, but no trace of Bruno. Quentin tells Chris that he didn’t kill any living person, that he only returned to death something that had already died, and rightly so. He advises Chris to avoid zombies from now on. When we heard Quentin offer this great-grandfatherly guidance, Mrs Acilius laughed out loud- what does Quentin think, that Chris spends his nights hanging out at the zombie bar?

It turns out Chris will have more trouble following great-granddad’s counsel than he might have thought. At the end, Jabe stands in a cemetery, by a row of four fresh graves of men each of whom died in his thirties, and prays to the “god of the Underworld” to raise them so that he can use them to kill five other people and send their souls his way forever. Whichever god he reaches apparently likes the terms of this deal, because a hand pops up through the dirt.

This post is something of a private milestone for me. I was inspired to blog about Dark Shadows by Danny Horn’s great Dark Shadows Every Day. As the title would suggest, Danny’s original idea was to post about an episode a day, but as he went his posts got to be more and more ambitious and less and less frequent. He posted a review of #1170 in October 2019, then gave up altogether for several months, not posting again until July 2020. Danny started with #210; since the makers of the show skipped some episode numbers, #1170 was the 946th episode he had covered. I started at the beginning, so #962 is my 947th episode.

My project is in no way comparable to Danny’s. I have his blog to consult, as well as other fine sites, especially John and Christine Scoleri’s Dark Shadows Before I Die, while he was usually the first to review the episodes he dealt with. And my posts are nothing like as ambitious as were his. So, if I have only a few stray remarks to make about an episode, I just make those remarks and call it a day. In that situation, Danny would write a detailed review of a novel or a board game or something else related to the show, or analyze an historical event connected with it, or compose a stunning prose poem, then append his remarks about the episode as a postscript. But modest as my aims are, I’m still haunted by the fear that I’ll run out of steam, so it’s reassuring to me that I’ve maintained daily posting beyond the point at which he took his long hiatus.

I have my eye on a couple of upcoming Danny-derived benchmarks. He posted about a total of 1018 episodes; I’ll reach that number with #1033 on 10 June. And of course #1170 itself has a cursed aura, I’ll be glad to get beyond that. Once I do, I’ll probably be counting down by percentages until I reach the end of the series with #1245 in April 2027.

After April 2027, I plan to review the feature film Night of Dark Shadows* in a post to go up on the 56th anniversary of its release, 3 August 2027, and Tim Burton’s 2012 film Dark Shadows at some point thereafter. I’m leaning towards reviewing the series that aired on NBC in primetime in 1991 and the pilot that Dan Curtis shot for the WB network in 2004. If I do write about those things, the posts will go up sometime after the one about Night of Dark Shadows and before the one about the Tim Burton movie. I probably won’t cover any of the novels or comic books or newspaper strips or other spinoffs. I did review Dan Curtis’ TV movie of Frankenstein on a preemption day in 2024, and if I review any of his other standalone adaptations of material that Dark Shadows mined it will be on upcoming preemption days, not as posts that appear after I’ve finished the original series.

*House of Dark Shadows was released 28 October 1970, while the show was still on. My post about it should go live on 28 October 2026, the same day as the one about #1132.

Episode 961: Fatigue, that’s what it was

The Leviathan People, a race of Elder Gods, are planning to retake the Earth from humanity. Like all stories of Elder Gods, this one raises the question of why they lost the Earth in the first place. The answer seems to be clear. The first Leviathan to manifest himself is a shape-shifting monster who spends most of his time in the form of a tall young man who, when we were introduced to him, asked to be called “Jabe.” No one would call him that, so he settled for “Jeb.” The Leviathans have assembled a cult of people to serve them; Jabe’s personality has alienated many of them already, and seems likely to alienate more.

Among the ex-followers who were glad to join a plot to exterminate homo sapiens but who found Jabe too obnoxious to stomach are vampire Barnabas Collins and a crazed sadist known only as Bruno. Jabe’s onetime foster mother, Megan Todd, lost her allegiance to the Leviathans after Barnabas bit and enslaved her. Since Barnabas’ current bout of vampirism is the result of a curse Jabe placed on him during a tantrum, the cult’s loss of Megan is another strike against Jabe.

The Leviathans have two principal vulnerabilities. They can be destroyed by ghosts or by werewolves. Since they have chosen to start their campaign on the great estate of Collinwood, which is the world capital of both ghosts and werewolves, this would suggest that they are as bad at strategic planning as Jabe is at team-building.

Bruno has captured the current werewolf and lures Jabe to him. He also discovers that Megan is Barnabas’ blood thrall. Everything else today is filler, but it does give the actors a chance to show off. Bruno beats the werewolf with a whip to ensure that he will be angry enough “to rip a man to shreds!” He’s a werewolf, the whole idea is that he’s already disposed to rip anyone he meets to shreds, but as Bruno Michael Stroka puts so much zest into the whipping scene that we forget how ridiculous the furry rig Alex Stevens is wearing looks and feels sorry for the poor widdle doggie.

Leave that poochie alone! Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas summons Megan to his house and gives her some instructions that don’t make sense and that she won’t have the chance to follow. While she is there, she says she just wants him to suck her blood. He does. Marie Wallace plays Megan in this scene as if she is having a sexy dream.

Bruno left the late Sheriff Davenport, whom Jabe killed and then brought back as a zombie slave, to guard the werewolf. To keep the zombie from getting in the way of his plan to use the werewolf against Jabe, he tricks him into letting the werewolf destroy him. Davenport is the most garrulous zombie of all time; in his first postmortem appearance, when Jabe set him to hold prisoner Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, Davenport rambled on and on about everything he saw and heard, at one point launching into an explanation of some things his wife used to do that annoyed him. Today he has to argue with Bruno, demanding to know whether he has authorization from Jabe to leave the werewolf alive and giving his opinion that it isn’t a good idea to take too much initiative. Ed Riley does as much as anyone could to overcome the ludicrous overwriting of his part. No one could make a chatterbox like Zombie Davenport seem like a partially reanimated corpse, but when he isn’t saddled with excessive dialogue Riley manages to create the impression that he is at least somewhat weird. It’s too bad he won’t be back.

Episode 947: More! MORE! MO-O-O-RE!!!

Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins comes home shortly after dawn and finds that the window of his front parlor has been smashed in. Entering the house, he finds two young men passed out. He knows both of these men, and knows that neither is what he seems to be. The taller of them, who once asked to be called Jabe, is in his true form an indescribable monster from beyond space and time, the harbinger of the Leviathan People, a race of Elder Gods who mean to retake the Earth and destroy humankind. The other, Chris Jennings, is a werewolf. The Leviathans are vulnerable to werewolves, and Barnabas realizes that Chris reverted to his human form when the sun rose, just as he was about to kill Jabe.

Chris comes to, and Barnabas hustles him out of the house. He then wakes Jabe. He tells Jabe that he fought the werewolf off, killing it and saving Jabe’s life. Barnabas was the original leader of a cult devoted to serving the Leviathans, but has since become disaffected. Jabe had seen evidence of this, and set out for Barnabas’ house meaning to punish him for his disloyalty. But by the time the werewolf chased him into the house he was crying out for Barnabas to help him, so he is ready to believe the story. Taking credit for things he had nothing to do with is one of Barnabas’ core competencies, so it is no surprise to longtime viewers that Jabe decides that he can trust Barnabas after all.

Barnabas’ ex-wife Angelique is now married to a man named Sky Rumson. She does not believe that Sky knows anything about her past or about anything supernatural, but the audience has seen over the last few episodes that he is an agent of the Leviathans. Angelique put Barnabas’ distant cousin Carolyn up in a house she and Sky have on an island to help Barnabas in his fight against the Leviathans while Sky was away on a business trip. At the end of that trip, Sky called to ask Angelique to pick him up at an airport far from the island house. When she got to the airport, she found he had already left. She wound up spending several hours alone on the road. Returning viewers know that Sky’s call was a trick to get her away from the house so Jabe could come and have his way with Carolyn. We also know that Jabe chickened out of his evil plan when he actually saw Carolyn, and that she is fine now.

Angelique comes home from her long wild goose chase and asks Sky what happened. He said he had an important phone call coming at the house, so he had to leave early. Angelique accepts this surprisingly easily. Barnabas shows up to take Carolyn home. He and Sky meet. After Barnabas is gone, Sky asks what the deal is with Carolyn. He presses the point, and Angelique tells him everything she knows about Barnabas and the Leviathans, including that he is now “their most dedicated enemy and he means to use every power he has to stop them.”

This scene is bad news for Barnabas, but it is worse for the audience’s image of Angelique. She used to be a wicked witch of vast destructive power, and was supposed to be the ultimate Soap Opera Vixen. But you wouldn’t have to be a witch, or even a vixen, to avoid the situation Angelique puts herself in. Leaving the airport when he knew she was on the way was a colossal act of thoughtlessness, and no husband who committed it could expect to hear a word from his wife about anything else for at least a week. After that, there will be a long period when she will have an unanswerable source of material to keep him off his guard any time he tries to bring up topics she doesn’t want to discuss. By the time Sky is able to start asking questions about why Angelique had Carolyn spend the night, it will probably be another full moon.

That isn’t even the worst of it. Angelique believes that Sky is simply a denizen of the sunlit world known to us in our everyday experience and explained well by science, and she further believes that he sees her in the same way. That makes it all but impossible for her to tell him what she tells him here. She launches right in with “the Leviathans, they’re terribly dangerous creatures, completely evil and they mean to start a whole new society.” If he really were a total naïf in supernatural matters, this story would lead him to pick up the telephone and call the men in the white coats to come and take Angelique to a place where she could get a good long rest.

I don’t think Angelique’s scene with Sky could have worked in any case, but Geoffrey Scott’s limitations as an actor make it even worse than it had to be. He underacted so severely that he could hardly be said to be giving a performance at all. That makes a stark contrast with Lara Parker, who as Angelique fully embraced the hyper-intense Dark Shadows house style of acting, which, in honor of her own hilarious explanation of it, is sometimes known as “Go back to your grave!” That contrast is interesting at a technical level. It goes a long way towards explaining what Orson Welles meant when he said that hamminess was not overacting, but false acting. Parker goes as far over the top as she can, but there is rarely anything false about Angelique, while every tinny note Scott strikes in his flat recitation of his lines is thoroughly fake.

A charismatic actor might have been wasted as Sky, as Parker is wasted today. But the audience might have been able to meet the show halfway if we could believe that Sky was so fascinating to Angelique that she didn’t realize what she was saying. As it is, Scott looks so much like he is modeling menswear for the Sears catalogue that it is always a bit of a surprise when he moves and speaks. However much Angelique might enjoy Sky’s company, it never occurs to us that he would be a match for her in any sense.

Sky goes to Jabe and repeats what Angelique told him about Barnabas. There is an exchange which looks fine in print, but which Scott’s delivery makes sound like a blooper:

JABE: So everything he told me this morning was a lie! And I thought he had saved my life!

SKY: Evidently, everything he told you was a lie.

You would deliver Sky’s line with an emphasis on “everything,” as would I, as would anyone else. But Scott emphasizes “Evidently” and pauses slightly after “you,” making it sound as if he hadn’t heard Jabe. For a fraction of a second, you can see the amazement in Christopher Pennock’s face as he reacts to this clanger.

Jabe carries a cage with him as he goes to an old graveyard. The camera locks in on him in closeup as he shouts that, while death might be an adequate punishment for a mere murderer, Barnabas must suffer “More! MORE! MO-O-O-ORE!!!” More, more, more, how do you like it, how do you like it….

More more more. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The first time I saw this scene, I regarded it as a low point- I imagined someone tuning in to Dark Shadows for the first time at that moment, and instantly turning it off, believing ever after that only people of an extremely low mentality could like the show. I still think it’s pretty embarrassing writing, but having seen him in other roles I’ve come to realize that Pennock was in fact a good actor and that as Jabe he was saddled with an impossible task. Also, I’ve seen video of him on panels of original cast members at Dark Shadows conventions, and it is obvious that he was as sweet as Jabe is vicious. So watching the scene today, I ignored Jabe and looked at Christopher Pennock, studying his face to see what he was thinking as he struggled to find a way to give the audience something worth their while.

Jabe makes an incantation, and a bat comes flying to him. He catches it in the cage. We get a closeup of the bat puppet in the cage, which looks very much like a humane trap from Havahart. We know that Jabe plans to use the bat to make Barnabas back into a vampire, which he was for 172 years, but the realistic cage and the adorable little puppet prevent the situation from generating any terror. Dan Curtis said that when he was producing Dark Shadows, his young daughters used to urge him to make the show more frightening. When we were chuckling at the sight of the bat today, Mrs Acilius imitated a child saying “Make it scary, Daddy!”

Behold and tremble! Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 946: To come to me willingly

In May and June of 1967, vampire Barnabas Collins held Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, prisoner. He drank her blood, tortured her, and drove her insane. When Maggie escaped, he turned his attentions to well-meaning governess Vicki Winters. Maggie’s imprisonment was the storyline that first made Dark Shadows a hit, but it was bleak and often difficult to watch, and if its horrors had shortly after been reenacted with Vicki as the victim many viewers would likely have given up on the show. So Barnabas decided that he wanted Vicki to come to him of her own will. That avoided the problem, but left the show stuck in a rut. For the next several months, Barnabas did not have a coherent goal. Since he was the main figure in the A story, that left Dark Shadows spinning in circles.

They escaped from that rut in November 1967, when Vicki went back in time to the 1790s. The audience followed her there, and we found out how Barnabas first became a vampire. He had fallen afoul of wicked witch Angelique. Angelique wanted Barnabas to love her. Since her enormous powers were explicitly shown to include the ability to make people fall in love with each other, we wondered why she didn’t simply use that ability on Barnabas. They answered that question by having Angelique declare that she wanted him to come to her of his own will. She tried to attract his love by casting a series of spells on everyone around him, spells that resulted in death and ruin for the people he most cared about. When Barnabas found out what was going on and tried to kill Angelique, she turned him into a vampire.

Now it is January 1970, and Barnabas’ vampire curse is in abeyance. A race of Elder Gods called the Leviathan People are trying to retake the Earth from humankind, and have threatened to reactivate the curse if he does not help them. The Leviathans control a group of people whom they have formed into a cult devoted to their service. The Leviathans have brought a shape-shifting monster to life, and it is written that the monster will marry Barnabas’ distant cousin Carolyn Collins Stoddard and turn her into a creature like himself.

Angelique has renounced her powers and is trying to live as a mortal woman. The other day, Barnabas asked her to help him protect Carolyn from the Leviathans. Angelique no longer wants anything to do with Barnabas or anyone else from the estate of Collinwood, but she understands the threat the Leviathans pose and is willing to help Barnabas against them, provided she can do so without losing what she has in her current life. Barnabas arranged for Carolyn and her mother, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, to hide out at Angelique’s house while he tried to figure out a way of fighting the monster. Liz is a dedicated member of the cult, and believes Barnabas to be its faithful leader, so when Barnabas told her to take Carolyn to Angelique’s she complied at once.

Unknown to Angelique, her husband, hard-charging businessman Sky Rumson, is himself a member of the Leviathan cult. Thursday, he telephoned the monster and told him Carolyn was at the house; Friday he opened the door to the monster, and the monster went to Carolyn. Today, the monster decides that he will not impose the transformation on Carolyn after all. Instead, he will wait for her to come to him of her own will. This keeps the story from ending here, but it makes it unclear where it can go.

The monster’s decision poses a deeper problem for him as a presence on the show than the similar decisions did for Barnabas and Angelique. They pursued identifiable goals, and were influenced by thoughts and feelings they had while they interacted with others. The only goal the monster has is to take possession of Carolyn, and now it is unclear what that means. Nor is anything at stake for him in any encounter with another person. He keeps saying that he doesn’t need anyone, and that seems to be true- there is no reason to pay attention to him in any scene. He has, in short, been established not as a character at all, but simply as a function. All he has ever been is Threat. Now that he has decided to be nice to Carolyn, he will no longer even fulfill that function. His future would appear to be quite limited.

Sky also appears to be a short-timer. When Dark Shadows started, one of its most dynamic characters was hard-charging businessman Burke Devlin, played ably by the charismatic Mitchell Ryan. Despite all of Ryan’s magnetism, they could never come up with anything very interesting for Burke to do. Hard-charging businessman just isn’t a type they have much use for. They signal that Sky won’t be around long by casting Geoffrey Scott in the role. Scott was very handsome and would go on to a long career on screen, but in early 1970 he did not appear to have any skills of any kind as an actor. Not only does he deliver his dialogue as if he were reading a series of nonsense syllables aloud, but he is noticeably bad at hitting his mark. For example, on Friday Sky at one point backed away from Carolyn during a conversation. He took a step too far, with the result that his rear end was a few inches from a hearth with a vigorously burning fire. It was hard not to watch the seat of his pants and wait for it to ignite. There were times when they cast actors who still needed a lot of training and kept them around for quite a while, but Scott was at this point in his career so amazingly inept that it is hard to imagine they meant to use him for anything more than the decorative value his good looks offered.

Liz is at home in the great house of Collinwood when a man she has not seen before appears on the walkway above the foyer and starts giving her orders. He comes down and introduces himself to her by the name Bruno. He shows her that he is wearing a ring that identifies him as a member of the Leviathan cult. Liz says that he must have come to give her instructions. He confirms that this is so.

A howling resounds outside, and Bruno asks Liz about it. She tells him that she long ago met a wolf-like creature in the woods, and she suspects the howling comes from that creature. Returning viewers know that the Leviathans are vulnerable to werewolves and that the monster is terrified of them. Bruno knows this too, so he goes out to hunt for it.

The monster, in the form of a tall young man, comes to the great house to introduce himself to Liz. She is concerned when he tells her to stop taking orders from Barnabas, but delighted when he says that Carolyn has a future with “us.” Carolyn telephones from Angelique’s house, and Liz puts the monster on the phone.

Carolyn is all smiles when she is talking to the monster. They’ve met a few times, and he has been nothing but a jerk to her. She had objected to his behavior, and his responses had ranged from frightening to slimy. That she is all of a sudden attracted to him undercuts her character almost as badly as nerfing his threat to her undercuts his position on the show.

After the phone call, Bruno returns. He tells the monster he couldn’t find the werewolf. The monster declares that he will go to the Old House on the estate to confront Barnabas, whom he labels a traitor. Bruno points out that it is almost daybreak, and if he waits just a little while he will not be in danger from the werewolf. The monster says that it is too important to wait.

The werewolf chases the monster through the woods. By the time the monster gets to the Old House, he is shouting for Barnabas, the “traitor” he was planning to deal with, to come and help him. Barnabas is nowhere to be seen, and we end with the werewolf bursting through the window. The werewolf got a few closeups earlier in the episode, when he was nosing around in the woods. These always make him look like a cute widdle doggie. If they hadn’t given us those ridiculous images, his entrance through the window might have been a genuinely scary moment.

The right way to show a werewolf. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Carolyn’s scene at the beginning involves a couple of notable wardrobe-related points. She went to bed Friday fully dressed, even wearing shoes, and is still that way when she is back in bed today. Several times we have seen men go to bed shoes and all, but usually the women wear nighties. I think this is the first time we have seen a shod woman asleep in bed.

Carolyn falls on her back in the opening reprise. She is wearing a very short skirt, and this fall exposes her underwear. She is lying on the bed in several subsequent shots, and it must have taken some doing to keep the undies from making another unscheduled guest appearance.

Episode 942: Michael grown

Our Story So Far

The current A story revolves around a race of Elder Gods called the Leviathan People. The Leviathans have taken over the minds of several characters and formed them into a cult devoted to advancing their plan to return to Earth and supplant humankind. As part of this plan, a monster has taken up residence in the room above the antique shop in the village of Collinsport. The monster’s true form is bizarre, terrifying, and unseen. It can assume other forms, and as it was growing it went through the shapes of a series of children. Now its human guise is that of a man in his twenties who, when first we saw him, invited people to “Call me Jabe.”

Jabe is a blowhard, impatient, petulant, and unreflective. He is keen to take heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard as his bride and make her into the same kind of monster he is. Carolyn’s distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, was the Leviathans’ first choice as leader of the cult, and has now become disaffected from it. Working with another distant cousin, the perennially youthful Quentin Collins, Barnabas has for the moment put a stop to Jabe’s plans for Carolyn. Jabe has killed a couple of people, including Carolyn’s father Paul Stoddard and Sheriff Davenport, and plans to kill many more. He is fairly sure that Barnabas is working against him, but is afraid that if he strikes out at Barnabas his own superiors among the Leviathans will punish him. Carolyn’s mother, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, and her cousin, strange and troubled boy David Collins, are devoted members of the cult, as is Quentin’s great-granddaughter Amy Jennings, but none of them knows about Jabe’s plans for Carolyn.

When Jabe appeared to be a thirteen year old boy named Michael, he spent a substantial amount of time bullying David. He has continued this in his adult form, breaking David’s leg for no reason to which the audience was made privy. David’s governess, Maggie Evans, saw Michael’s mistreatment of David and tried to stop it, and in response he locked her up and tried to kill her. No one has told Maggie that Michael and Jabe are the same person, but she does know that that Jabe is at fault for David’s injury. She has also, in the last several days, seemed to be getting very cozy with Barnabas. Jabe has abducted Maggie and has her locked up in a big mausoleum someplace.

Meet Bruno

Jabe is in the antique shop when a man wearing a fur coat enters. Regular viewers recognize the actor as Michael Stroka. For most of 1969, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the year 1897, and Stroka played the sadistic Aristide, henchman to sorcerer Count Petofi. Petofi was a witty and whimsical villain, and Aristide spent a great deal of time as his straight man. Aristide also gave Stroka opportunities to show off his own formidable gift for deadpan comedy.

Bruno and Jabe. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The fur coat is so specific to 1970 that the sight of Stroka wearing it means that the show has very literally returned to “contemporary dress.” His character introduces himself to Jabe as Bruno, and says that he will help him in any way. Bruno shows considerable knowledge of the story so far; the other cultists didn’t come with that knowledge, leading us to wonder whether he is one of them or is some kind of supernatural being. As the episode goes on, we see that Bruno shares Aristide’s fascination with knives and his glee in threatening to kill and disfigure pretty girls, and is also about as ineffective when he sets about doing Jeb’s dirty work as Aristide was when he tried to do Petofi’s. So however he came to know what he knows, it seems safe to dismiss the idea that he is anything other than what Aristide was.

David and Barnabas

At the great house of Collinwood, David enters by means of wheelchair. He and Barnabas talk about Maggie’s unexplained absence. They consider the possibility that Jabe might be responsible for it.

Just the other day, adult characters not in on the secret of the Leviathan cult mentioned that David did not seem like “the same little boy” he had been. He isn’t a little boy at all- he’s thirteen. Barnabas talks to him in this scene as one adult to another. After all these years, it’s refreshing to see a sign that David might eventually be allowed to grow up.

Maggie’s First Tormenter

Maggie awakens to find herself in a mausoleum. Before she can make her way to the door, the late Sheriff Davenport enters. Jabe has raised him from the dead and made him his slave. Your typical zombie is an inarticulate sort, who, if moved to speech at all, might emit a faint groan of “Brai-i-i-ins.” Davenport is an exception to this norm. He is positively chatty. He talks about how uncomfortable his grave was, about his sympathy for Maggie, and even starts in with a story about his wife. The guy just won’t shut up.

David and Jabe

David goes to the antique shop. How he got himself from Collinwood to the village in a manual wheelchair designed for use in a hospital is not explained. He tells Jabe about his conversation with Barnabas, including the part where Barnabas told him to study the holy book of the Leviathans and look for information about Jabe’s weaknesses. He says that he found a passage saying that Jabe is vulnerable to werewolves. He didn’t tell Barnabas about this, but came straight to the shop. Jabe is terrified by the mention of werewolves, and relieved David didn’t talk to Barnabas. He tells him not to trust Barnabas.

Jabe and David. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

There is a werewolf on the show, Amy’s brother Chris Jennings, who inherited the curse from their great-grandfather Quentin. Quentin’s own lycanthropy was put into abeyance by the same magic spell that immunized him against aging. We haven’t seen Chris for about a month, when there was a full moon and he killed a character left over from an exhausted storyline. There were some hints early in the current story that Chris represented a threat to the Leviathans, and this is now confirmed.

Maggie’s Second Tormenter

Bruno shows up in the crypt where the late Sheriff Davenport is haranguing Maggie. He sends Davenport to guard the door. Maggie asks Bruno if he is dead, too. He assures her he isn’t, and is very unpleasant to her. Aristide was a lot of fun when he had someone to play off of, but where Petofi was sprightly, Jeb is monotonous. While Aristide would set his sights on victims who gave him more resistance than he bargained for, Maggie’s situation makes her tense and unwilling to volunteer anything. Maggie holds her ground and refuses to answer any of Bruno’s questions, so that he cannot afford to murder her as he had intended to do. That’s logical behavior on her part and a happy ending for the audience, but it does keep Bruno from doing anything to make us want to see him again.

Bruno meets David

Bruno goes to the antique shop. Jeb introduces him to David. He pushes David out of the shop with a brisk movement that is Stroka’s first opportunity to get a laugh as Bruno. He reports his failure to Jabe, who is too afraid of werewolves to rage at him as he has raged at everyone else who has told him things he didn’t want to hear.

Maggie’s Third Tormenter

Jabe goes to the crypt and sends Sheriff Davenport back out. He confronts Maggie, who tells him she recognizes him as “Michael grown up,” using the exact phrase David had used with Barnabas earlier. He tells her she will be all right if she opens a wooden box he has brought with him and looks in it. Returning viewers know that this is “the Leviathan Box,” and that it was by opening it and looking inside that Amy came under the power of the cult.

Episode 919/ 920/ 921: The giver without a gift

Centenarian Charles Delaware Tate, once a famous painter, is trapped in his parlor with a man who is threatening to kill him. The man is Chris Jennings. Chris tells Tate that there will be a full moon tonight, and he identifies himself as a werewolf. In 1897, Tate painted a portrait of Chris’ great-grandfather, Quentin Collins. That portrait had magical powers that immunized Quentin against both lycanthropy and aging, and Chris is demanding Tate do the same for him. Tate keeps telling Chris that he no longer has the ability to create such things, but Chris won’t listen. Tate does a sketch. He says that his work is finished and tells Chris to take it and leave. Before Chris can comply, he turns into the wolf and attacks Tate.

Chris had been in a secure room at a mental hospital controlled by his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. He deliberately checked himself out and forced his way into Tate’s house because he wanted to use his condition as a weapon to coerce Tate. Julia is the audience’s chief point of view character these days, and she feels sorry for Chris. We also like two characters who care about Chris and don’t know that he is a werewolf. Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard is attracted to Chris and seems to have some lingering hopes that a romance might blossom between them, and Chris’ little sister Amy loves him and believes in him. Even one of Chris’ surviving victims, prematurely gray Sabrina Stuart, told Carolyn in #889 that while Chris is dangerous, “he is good.”

Despite everything these ladies are doing to help us like Chris, there can be no doubt that his attack on Tate is murder with premeditation and extraordinary cruelty. Roger Davis can usually be counted on to make us sympathize with anyone who is murdering one of his characters, but he plays Tate today with sensitivity and pathos, leaving us no way to avoid seeing a helpless old man locked up with a vicious killer. Chris’ future on Dark Shadows is limited for a number of reasons, chiefly his passivity in the face of his curse and his dependence on Julia and others to initiate action on his behalf. His abuse of Tate suggests that for whatever time he may have left on the show, Chris will be an unsympathetic villain.

Meanwhile, Carolyn is spending the day working as an assistant in an antique shop owned by her friends Megan and Philip Todd. Our first view of the shop today features Carolyn reflected in a mirror, but the main part of it is the taxidermied head of a baying wolf, emphasizing the danger Chris poses to everyone in and around the village of Collinsport.

The Wolf is loose, Carolyn is boxed in. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

A pair of hands cover Carolyn’s eyes. When they are pulled away, she expects to find that they belong to Philip’s eight year old nephew Alexander, but instead discovers that a thirteen year old boy she has never before seen has introduced himself to her by creeping up behind her and grabbing her face. The boy tells her that his name is Michael, that he is another of Megan and Philip’s relatives, and that Alexander has gone away. He tries to give Carolyn a pendant, but she recognizes it as one Megan wears and says that Michael can’t very well make a gift of something that doesn’t belong to him. He becomes very stiff and screams “How dare you not believe me!?” He doesn’t get any more pleasant as the scene goes on.

Philip comes in and tries to establish some kind of control; Carolyn takes the opportunity to excuse herself. As Michael and Philip talk, it becomes clear that they are part of a secret group with sinister plans. Returning viewers know that Michael and Alexander are not really human children, but are two manifestations of the same supernatural force. As Alexander, this force was a joyless, hateful little tyrant; Michael is no more appealing.

Dark Shadows originally ran on the ABC television network five days a week, from Monday through Friday. The episodes were numbered in a sequence reflecting the order of their original broadcast. When for whatever reason the show did not air on a given day, they would skip a number to keep the episodes airing on Fridays associated with production numbers divisible by 5. That made it easy to figure out how many weeks the show had been on, which in turn made it easy to keep track of where the show was in the thirteen week cycle that governed its long-term planning and the network’s decision to renew it.

In the last months of 1969, the show was being taped several weeks in advance of airdates, in a couple of instances more than five weeks ahead of time. This was atypical, and it led to a problem with the numbering. They knew that no episodes would air on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, or New Year’s Day, but did not foresee that the network would preempt #891 for live news coverage of the return of the Apollo 12 astronauts to Earth on 24 November 1969. Since they had already shot that episode and many following it with the original production numbers on the opening slate, it wasn’t until this one that they had the chance to get the numbers back in synch. That is why it is listed with the three numbers 919, 920, and 921. The only other time they had to skip two numbers was in November 1966, when coverage of football games on and after Thanksgiving Day blotted out #109 and #110. Since that disruption to the schedule was planned, the slate for the next episode was just marked #111. This is therefore the only episode regularly referred to with a triple number.

Episode 918: Ways of remaining young

Mrs Acilius and I did our first watch-through of Dark Shadows on streaming starting in the spring of 2020, when there was no live theater to attend. When we got to the episodes introducing Barnabas Collins the vampire, I found Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day, which picks up with those and follows the series to its conclusion. I enjoyed Danny’s blog very much, and soon became one of his regular commenters. When we started this watch-through to coincide with the 56th anniversary, I looked for someplace to leave my comments on the episodes Danny didn’t cover, and found that all I could do was to start this blog of my own.

In his post about #412, Danny wrote: “This actor, Roger Davis, plays five roles on Dark Shadows, and they just get more and more angry. By the time we get to Harrison Monroe in late 1969, his character is literally an automaton sitting behind a desk, who yells at people nonstop until his head falls off. That is actually true.” I remember reading that in 2020 and doubting that it was actually true, but by the time we got to this episode and saw it happen, we had learned not to underestimate Dark Shadows. It is far and away the best Roger Davis moment on Dark Shadows. In fairness to Mr Davis, he is a highly trained actor who can do good work, but he chose to do so only a handful of times on the show. When we see that the writers are as sick of his obnoxiousness as we are, it’s an occasion to stand up and cheer.

Much of the episode is taken up with some business about whether matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her thirteen year old nephew David Collins are going to murder permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman. Liz and David have been absorbed into a secret cult devoted to unseen supernatural beings called the Leviathans, and Julia, who cannot be absorbed into the cult, is on track to uncover its existence. Liz takes a pistol and aims it at Julia’s back. Julia is absorbed in another crisis, and by the time she notices that someone else is in the room, Liz has put the pistol down.

Liz can’t bring herself to shoot Julia. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Liz tells David she can’t bring herself to kill Julia, who has been very helpful to the family in the past. David sternly tells her that they must put aside all such considerations and think only of their duty to the Leviathans. They consult a sacred book the Leviathans have entrusted to them, and read that they must not kill anyone, since the ghosts of their victims are more formidable to them than are living people. Since most of the principal characters on the show, including Julia, Liz, and David, have committed or at least attempted homicide, this prohibition would seem to imply that the Leviathans are the good guys.

There is also a story about Quentin Collins and his great-grandson Chris Jennings. Quentin was a werewolf in the nineteenth century and Chris has inherited that curse. In 1897, a repellent little man named Charles Delaware Tate painted Quentin’s portrait. The portrait had magical powers, relieving Quentin of the effects both of lycanthropy and of aging. Quentin recently came back to town, suffering from amnesia and refusing to listen to Julia or Chris when they try to tell him he is 99 years old. Julia and Chris hope that Tate will be able to do for Chris what he did for Quentin, and they have figured out that he is still alive and using the name Harrison Monroe.

The moon was full enough last night to trigger the werewolf transformation, and will be again tonight. Chris turns up. She had taken him to a mental hospital she controls, to be locked up securely while he is in his lupine form; he checked himself out, and says he can’t stand being caged. Since the alternative is killing at least one person at random, it is rather difficult to sympathize with Chris’ insistence on letting himself out.

For her part, Julia was already afraid that a werewolf was on the loose before she knew Chris had left the hospital. She suspects Quentin may have reverted to lycanthropy. She goes to the apartment of the woman who has been keeping Quentin and finds him there, his face soiled and his clothing tattered as it might be the morning after a fit of werewolfery. It turns out that he did not transform- he simply got into a bar fight. When she tells Chris about this, he goes to his great-granddad and demands he accompany him to Tate/ Monroe’s house. Quentin isn’t interested in Chris or his problem or Tate/ Monroe, but he is too drunk to hold his ground for long.

Tate/ Monroe doesn’t want to let anyone in, but when Quentin announces himself he opens the door. Chris and Quentin see a young man sitting at a desk in a darkened room. The young man sees Quentin’s apparent youth and yells “Liar!,” shouting that he is too young to be Quentin. Quentin points out that Tate/ Monroe looks just as young as he does, and Tate/ Monroe responds by shouting something about being a genius. Within seconds, he is shouting that of course he recognizes him as Quentin. Confusing as this transition is, I don’t think it is a flaw in the writing, but in the acting. I suspect Mr Davis was supposed to put some sort of inflection on the lines in between to show that Tate has figured something out, but doing that would not be compatible with his technique of delivering all of his lines in an unvarying petulant shout.

Quentin can’t take Tate’s personality any more than the audience can. He throws a vase at him and runs out of the room. It’s when the vase hits the automaton that the head falls off.

The Leviathan story is based on some of H. P. Lovecraft’s stories. Chris and Quentin do not appear to have a direct connection to the Leviathans, but Harrison Monroe, and today’s closing revelation that he is a pile of junk arranged to look like a person, are taken from Lovecraft’s novella The Whisperer in Darkness. So perhaps werewolves and Leviathans have something to do with each other after all.

Episode 916: Julia Hoffman has had her dream

Certain People

Six weeks ago, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins was absorbed into a group serving supernatural beings known as the Leviathans. Also in the group is matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Barnabas and Liz are worried that mad scientist Julia Hoffman, Barnabas’ sometime best friend and Liz’ permanent houseguest, is catching on to the truth about their group. They decide Julia must be absorbed into it.

Barnabas finds Julia on a couch in the drawing room, reading a book about lycanthropy. He strikes up a conversation about Chris Jennings, a young man who suffers from that condition. Julia replies bitterly that she still cares about Chris, unlike Barnabas. He tells her that he does care, and they quarrel a bit. He then strokes Julia’s cheek. He did the same thing with Chris’ little sister Amy in #912, at which point Amy fell asleep. Shortly after Amy woke up, she had become part of the Leviathan group. Julia gets a headache and goes to her room, where she does fall asleep.

We didn’t see a dream sequence when Amy fell asleep, but do see one for Julia today. The visuals alternate between two stock clips of lightning flashes as we hear Jonathan Frid give a dramatic reading of some portentous nonsense, then give way to Julia finding Barnabas in the drawing room inviting her to open a wooden box. We saw a dream of Liz’ in #904; she woke from it already transformed into a faithful devotee of the Leviathans. But when Julia wakes up, she just has a worse headache.

They’ve shown us this clip more times than I can count…

… but I don’t think we’ve seen this one before. It’s fascinating to me, like an image David Lynch would have used in *Eraserhead* or the third season of *Twin Peaks*.

Julia goes downstairs and find Liz holding the box from her dream. She is urging her to open it. Julia is confused by the situation. A knock comes at the door, and she rushes to answer it. It is Chris, saying that it is time for Julia to drive him to the institution where he is locked up on nights of the full moon. Julia calls back to Liz that she will be back later in the evening.

Barnabas enters and says that Julia will never be absorbed into the cult. If she were suited for absorption, the knock at the door would not have distracted her. He explains that “There are certain people, Elizabeth, whom we are not able to absorb. It has to do with their genetic structure. And Julia Hoffman is one of them.” As a former vampire who is now leading a cult that is trying to bring a race of Elder Gods back into the world where they will destroy and replace humankind, Barnabas is supposed to be strange and unnerving, but hearing him talk about “certain people” and their “genetic structure” is off-putting in a whole other way. Why not just say that she’s Jewish, we know you mean that she’s Jewish.

Barnabas then tells Liz that it is now up to her to handle Julia. So far as we know, Liz does not have any special powers like those Barnabas uses when he fondles people’s faces. Liz doesn’t even know what the cult is all about- today, she asks Barnabas what the goal is they are working for, and he tells her he isn’t at liberty to say. So when Barnabas tells her to deal with Julia, we can only remember the last time we saw Joan Bennett playing a character under the control of an uncanny force, when Judith Collins shot and killed neurotic intellectual Rachel Drummond on the orders of vampire Dirk Wilkins in #776.

In #915, one Leviathan ordered Barnabas to kill Julia. When he refused, another caused him to have nightmares, then told him it was OK to leave Julia alive if he could find another way to keep her under control. That episode was written hurriedly and rushed into production at the last minute, three full weeks after this one was in the can, in response to complaints from fans dissatisfied with the Leviathan story in general and Barnabas’ coldness to Julia in particular. It’s anybody’s guess what they were originally planning to do with #915, but today’s episode makes it clear that it did not include the reset of Barnabas’ character that we saw yesterday. He is still leading the Leviathans, and when he delegates the problem to Liz murdering Julia is pretty obviously the likeliest solution.

Not a Portrait of Quentin Collins

Julia’s plan for Chris is to persuade an artist named Charles Delaware Tate to paint a portrait of him. Tate painted a portrait of Chris’ great-grandfather, Quentin Collins, in 1897. That portrait had magical powers. Once it was painted, Quentin’s own werewolf curse went into abeyance. It was the portrait that transformed on nights of the full moon, while Quentin himself remained human. Indeed, the portrait also caused Quentin to remain young and healthy. He returned to Collinsport a couple of weeks ago, and though he is 99 years old he still looks just like he did when he was 28. In #913/ 914, Julia found that Tate, also, is alive, and still looks like he did in 1897.

Quentin and Tate are not the only emigrés from 1897 currently sheltering in Collinsport. Another of Tate’s magical portraits, a concept piece depicting his ideal woman, caused its subject to pop into existence. In 1897, she went by the name Amanda Harris, met Quentin, and fell in love with him. She, too, is unchanged in 1969, though she now calls herself Olivia Corey.

Amanda/ Olivia and Julia are both hunting for paintings by Tate, and met each other through that pursuit. They have also met Quentin, and vied with each other to decide which would be the one to keep him. He has amnesia and knows only that he was carrying papers identifying him as Grant Douglas. He is open to the idea that this is not his real name, but he finds Julia’s attempt to convince him that he is a 99 year old man ludicrous and is frustrated with Amanda/ Olivia’s unwillingness to tell him when and where they first met.

Amanda/ Olivia comes back to her suite at the Collinsport Inn and finds Quentin there, swilling her booze and enormously drunk. He tells her that he finds his room depressing, because it doesn’t have a bar. He says he can’t stand not knowing who he is. She points out that he has taken this in his stride up to now, and asks why today is different. He says he doesn’t know why it is different, but it very much is. When the show was a costume drama set in 1897 and we saw Amanda, she did not know about Quentin’s lycanthropy, and now that she calls herself Olivia she still does not think of the full moon when she sees him in anguish.

Later, Julia shows up at Amanda/ Olivia’s door. She has brought one of Tate’s portraits of Amanda Harris. Amanda/ Olivia staggers back at the sight of it. She composes herself and says that it is of no interest to her, since she already has several of Tate’s paintings of her “grandmother.” Julia tells Amanda/ Olivia that the real reason she is not interested in it is that it is not a portrait of Quentin Collins. She replies that Julia is the one who is fascinated by Quentin, not she. Julia says that she wants to show the portrait to Quentin. Amanda/ Olivia does not bother pretending that his name is “Grant Douglas” or that it might be something other than “Quentin Collins”; she simply tells Julia that he is in his room sleeping off an alcoholic binge. Julia adopts her most unmistakably Mad Scientist manner when she responds “Then this is definitely the right time to see him!” She marches out, and Amanda/ Olivia follows her.

Julia had told Chris that if Quentin’s portrait has been destroyed, his lycanthropy will be back in force. If that is so, she wants to be with him when he transforms. This was a doubly confusing thing to say. First, if the portrait had been destroyed, Quentin would not only be a werewolf, he would also look his age. She therefore knows it is not so. Second, she does not have anything with her to protect her against werewolves. If she is with Quentin when he transforms, he will kill her immediately.

When Julia and Amanda/ Olivia let themselves into Quentin’s room, they find that it is a shambles and he is gone. As a closing cliffhanger, this is supposed to leave us with the fear that a werewolf is stalking Collinsport. But since we know what the portrait does for Quentin, it only leaves us wondering if Amanda/ Olivia will have to pay an extra housekeeping charge because he trashed the room she was renting for him.

When Julia met Tate in #913/914, she could not get him to engage her in any kind of conversation, much less agree to paint a portrait of Chris. She did not mention Amanda/ Olivia. Since Tate was maniacally obsessed with Amanda in 1897, Julia should have known that her acquaintance with her was the strongest card she had to play. So when she goes to Amanda/ Olivia’s suite today, returning viewers were hoping that she was going to propose they team up to persuade Tate to paint Chris. Perhaps that will still happen. If it does, it might be a lot more interesting than is the revelation that Quentin doesn’t keep his hotel room clean.

Episode 905: My darling now

Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard has been hung up on mysterious drifter Chris Jennings for a while. Unknown to Carolyn, Chris is her third cousin, the great-grandson of her great-great uncle Quentin Collins. That is a distant enough relation that it needn’t be an obstacle to romance. But Chris is keeping another secret that presents a more definite obstacle. He inherited from Quentin a curse that makes him a werewolf.

From March to November 1969, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in 1897. Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman traveled back in time from 1969 to that year, and befriended the living Quentin. They learned that Quentin had been freed of the effects of the werewolf curse when a magical portrait was painted of him. As long as the portrait remains intact, Quentin will not only retain his human form on the nights of the full moon, but will also be immune to injury, aging, and death. Julia and Barnabas know of Chris’ condition, and early in 1969 they were working together to cure him of it. Julia now hopes that another portrait can be painted to do for Chris what his great-grandfather’s portrait did for him.

Barnabas came back from the past wanting nothing to do with Chris. He has secretly been absorbed into a cult devoted to mysterious supernatural beings called the Leviathan people. When Barnabas first saw Chris after his return to 1969, he told him there was no hope for him. Since then, he has been cold and distant both to Chris and to Julia. He has urged Carolyn to forget Chris, and keeps telling her that she has a great future in store for her. We have had other indications that this future will involve a special role in the Leviathans’ plan to take over the world.

Now, Carolyn has met the living Quentin and become smitten with him. She does not know his true identity, but did tell Barnabas about him and that he was coming to meet her. Barnabas’ response was to run Quentin over with his car, claiming afterward that it was an accident.

Now, Quentin is in the hospital with a bandage on his head. He does not speak in today’s episode, but anyone who has seen a soap opera knows that a bandage wrapped around the head is a sure sign of amnesia. Indeed, when Julia addresses him as “Quentin,” he looks at her blankly.

Quentin wearing the amnesia badge. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In his post about the episode on his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn reminds us of another amnesia plot that followed a time travel story. That one dragged on for eight months, was never at all interesting, and ended with the two characters most directly involved being hustled off the show. Remembering it, longtime viewers will shudder at the sight of Quentin’s bandage. But amnesia stories are a staple of soaps, and Danny explains how they can work well by imagining a different version of that dismal flop:

Jeff Clark… might or might not have been a reincarnation of Peter Bradford, Vicki’s boyfriend from 1795. Somehow, they managed to spin that mystery out for a full eight months, until they finally decided that nobody cared, and then they wrote Jeff, Peter and Vicki off the show forever.

The real problem with the Jeff/Peter mystery — and this is important, for the Quentin/Grant Douglas conundrum — is that Jeff Clark was just an empty suit of clothes. Jeff had no memories, and he arrived on the scene with no family, and very little in the way of a storyline.

Worst of all, Jeff’s primary characteristic — being in love with Vicki — was also Peter’s primary characteristic, so it was a distinction without a difference. It didn’t really matter whether he was called Jeff or Peter, so they could just let it drift for month after month, with no appreciable impact on story progress.

Here’s how you do the amnesia story: Think of it as two people inhabiting the same body, and create a conflict between those people. If Peter’s in love with Vicki, then “Jeff” should be cold and distant. “Jeff” didn’t experience any of the events that brought Vicki and Peter together, so her clumsy attempts to revive his memory should upset and frustrate him.

At that point, you can take as long as you’d like to bring his memory back, because the longer this goes on, the more damage “Jeff” can do to Peter’s life. The ideal way to end that story is to have “Jeff” fall in love with Vicki’s worst enemy, and news of their engagement makes Vicki turn to someone new for support and understanding.

Then it should be obvious to everyone that his memory comes back on the day of his wedding, during or immediately after the vows. Suddenly, “Jeff” is Peter again, horrified to discover that he’s married to someone that he doesn’t like, and the love of his life is involved with somebody else.

That’s how you do the amnesia story.

Danny Horn, “Episode 905: Waiting for Quentin,” posted 27 July 2016 on Dark Shadows Every Day.

The sheer fact that Quentin is in a coma as a result of a collision with a car is a puzzle for attentive fans. In #844, sorcerer Count Petofi scraped Quentin’s cheek with a jagged piece of glass. That did not leave a mark on Quentin himself, but a scar appeared on the portrait in the place corresponding to the spot Petofi scratched. Since violence against Quentin leaves him as he was but marks the portrait, why is he hurt now? One of Danny’s commenters tackled this problem:

Yeah, why is he even hurt at all? The painting should have absorbed all the trauma of Barnabas’ reckless attempt at mayhem; the portrait should have amnesia. (Oh, but then it wouldn’t be protecting Quentin any more, since it wouldn’t remember who it’s a picture OF – which is why Quentin has the amnesia and injuries! How’s that for a fanwank?)…

Is it explained later just WHY Quentin thinks he’s Grant Douglas? Did he already have amnesia? And now he has double amnesia? (If I remember sitcom amnesia correctly, the second trauma should have reversed the first – but soap opera amnesia may be different.)

Comment left 29 December 2018 by “John E. Comelately” on Danny Horn, “Episode 905: Waiting for Quentin,” posted 27 July 2016 on Dark Shadows Every Day.

Later, Carolyn is at the antique shop where she has been working. The shop’s owner, Carolyn’s friend Megan Todd, makes a bunch of cryptic remarks about having discovered something greater than happiness. Carolyn wonders about the baby that Megan and her husband Philip have been looking after. She hears a ball bouncing in the upstairs room where the baby has been sleeping, and Megan orders her to ignore it. Eventually the ball comes rolling downstairs, and an eight year old boy follows it. Megan declares the boy to be her darling.

Returning viewers know that the baby was in fact some kind of creature associated with the Leviathans, and Megan has a scene in which Barnabas tells her that the creature is going to be undergoing a change. So we know that this boy and the baby are in fact one and the same.

That two consecutive men who attracted Carolyn turned out to be werewolves is interesting in light of the frequent references to the big plans the Leviathans have for her. The Leviathans have clearly not been giving their devotees a lot of background information about the tasks they make them perform, so that even if Barnabas did not know who Quentin was when he tried to kill him, the unseen forces manipulating him may have been well aware of that. Perhaps the show is suggesting that there is some kind of enmity between the Leviathans and werewolves.

Quentin’s ghost haunted the great house of Collinwood from December 1968 to September 1969 and wrought great havoc there. The haunting broke on the anniversary of an event in 1897 that went differently than it had originally because Barnabas and Julia had traveled back in time. But it was made clear when we returned to contemporary dress that the 1960s characters all remember the events of those ten months, and that Quentin’s ghost still frightens them. Carolyn was one of the few major characters who did not see the ghost, so I suppose it makes sense she isn’t afraid when she sees the living Quentin. But one does wonder what the reaction will be when the other residents of the great house meet him.

The Leviathan boy is played by David Jay, and is named in the credits as “Alexander.” Born in 1961, Mr Jay is the youngest person ever to have appeared on Dark Shadows. He acted off and on until the early 1980s. Evidently he is alive and well, but he never appeared at any of the Dark Shadows conventions and does not do the podcasts on which other cast members occasionally guest. Not one for the fandom, he.

Episode 900: Precious possession

We open with the sight of a man (Dennis Patrick) sitting nervously on a chair placed in the middle of a pentagram marked on a rug. At each point of the pentagram there is a candle. The man is Paul Stoddard.

Paul’s precarious pentagram perch. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Regular viewers will remember #752, in which Quentin Collins was told to sit on a chair in the middle of a similar pentagram. Quentin’s friend, amateur warlock Evan Hanley, told him that by doing this he could keep from turning into a werewolf. Paul isn’t afraid of turning into a werewolf, and he doesn’t have a friend like Evan. His worry is vague, but urgent- he knows that someone is after him, that if that someone catches up to him they will do something horrible, and that whoever it is keeps sending him messages that it is time for him to pay his debt. But he has no idea who that is, what they will do, or what the debt they are talking about. Sitting in the pentagram was a suggestion that came from a sailor who ~~cruised him in a gay bar~~ met him in a local tavern.

Paul’s pursuers are a cult associated with mysterious beings known as “the Leviathan people.” It has been made clear to us that both Paul and his daughter, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, are, unknown to themselves, part of its orbit. In #888, Paul and Carolyn ran into each other at a cairn that is the cult’s ceremonial center and looked at it. Carolyn had been on its site many times, and could not understand why she had not seen it before. In #894/895, the cult’s acting leader, Carolyn’s distant cousin Barnabas Collins, took antique shop owner Philip Todd to the cairn. Philip told Barnabas he had walked past the site a few days before and that the cairn was not there then; Barnabas explained that only those connected with the Leviathan cult can see it. Barnabas has also been highly solicitous of Carolyn’s well-being since he became part of the cult, and he keeps telling her that he knows she has an extraordinary future ahead of her. So we know that the cult has plans for her, and Paul’s distress suggests that they have less attractive plans for him.

Paul sees the doorknob turning. He is terrified. Instead of the enemy Paul expects, Carolyn enters. He yells at her to leave. She stays. When he is unable to explain what he is afraid of, but that the pentagram on the floor will protect him, she notices that it is the same as the symbol she has been wearing on a chain around her neck. Barnabas gave it to her some days ago and urged her to wear it always. The audience knows, but she does not, that he intends it to protect her from the local werewolf. When she sees the similarity, the show invites us to wonder what the Leviathans have to do with werewolves. Carolyn tells Paul that if the symbol will protect him from his enemies in the form of chalk or gaffer tape on the floor, it will also protect him when it is composed of a silver pendant. He puts the pendant on and declares that he feels much better. He can no longer hear the voices that have been telling him his payment is due immediately. He embraces Carolyn and tells her he trusts only her.

When Carolyn mentioned Barnabas to Paul, he responded “Who is Barnabas?” Carolyn seems surprised he does not know, since she saw him near Barnabas’ house. Indeed, we saw him enter Barnabas’ house and wander through it the night he first returned to Collinwood, after an absence of twenty years. But he doesn’t remember anything about that.

Not that Carolyn’s own long acquaintance with Barnabas is all that enlightening to her just now. Ever since the Leviathans adopted him as one of their own, he has not been himself at all. We see him in his front parlor with mad scientist Julia Hoffman, who has for a year and a half been his inseparable best friend. She is trying to interest him in some information she has gathered about another storyline, and he makes it clear he could not be less interested in it or in her. She demands to know what he is interested in, and he refuses to answer. Carolyn enters, and suddenly Barnabas is all ears. Julia, frustrated, snaps that now she can see what he does care about.

In the autumn of 1967, Barnabas was a vampire and Julia had failed in an attempt to make him human again. He bit Carolyn and made her his blood thrall. He also decided that he would kill Julia to prevent her exposing him. Julia soon learned that Carolyn was both a wily operator and a most devoted servant. Julia had already realized that she was in so deep with Barnabas that she would be unlikely ever to make a life with anyone else, and so she conceived an unrequited love for him. In her dealings with Carolyn in those days, terror mingled with jealousy. Her bitter remark when she sees that Barnabas, who has been so dismissive of her, is now so concerned with Carolyn, reminds longtime viewers of that jealousy. Combined with the story of a daughter reunited with her long-absent and none too respectable father, this faint suggestion of a love triangle is enough to remind us that we are watching a daytime soap.

For her part, Carolyn was freed of her subservience to Barnabas as soon as he was freed of the effects of the vampire curse in March 1968. For some time, Nancy Barrett went out of her way to play Carolyn in a way that left us wondering if Carolyn remembered her time in his power. The scripts didn’t give her a lot of support in that endeavor, but the closeness she feels towards him combines with Julia’s jealousy to bring it back to our minds.

Carolyn has come to ask Julia to help Paul. Julia is back in the great house of Collinwood getting her medical bag to take to Paul’s hotel room when Paul himself bursts in. He demands to see Carolyn. Julia tells him that she left a little while ago to go to his hotel, and is probably there now. The telephone rings. Julia answers it, and tells Paul it is for him. This doesn’t strike her as odd, even though he hasn’t set foot there in twenty years, not since the night he left his wife Liz thinking she had killed him. Julia hands the phone to Paul. He expects to hear Carolyn, but instead hears the same voice that has been taunting him, saying that his bill is due now. He hangs up, and it starts ringing again. He forbids Julia to answer it, and runs out. We cut to his hotel room, and see that this time it is Carolyn trying to reach her father. Later, Carolyn will come home and Julia will tell her that Paul doesn’t seem to want help, however much he may need it.

Paul goes back to his room, and hears the phone there ringing. Terrified, he runs out, returning to the bar where he’d ~~picked up trade~~ met a new friend the night before. He sees another stranger sitting at a table, looking him over and beckoning him by rolling back one finger. The stranger is Barnabas.

Barnabas beckons Paul. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Paul reluctantly goes to the table, and Barnabas introduces himself. Paul says he doesn’t know Barnabas, but Barnabas makes it clear he knows all about Paul. He asks him to think back to the night he left Collinwood in 1949. We dissolve to a flashback.

Paul is at the bar, and another strange man strikes up a conversation with him. The man encourages him to assume that he has the power to grant any wish Paul might make in return for a price they would agree on. Paul says that in that case, he will ask for twenty years of boundless prosperity. At the end of those twenty years, Paul will give up anything he has, even his “most precious possession.” They shake hands on this deal. Paul laughs, and says he has won the game. He said that he would surrender anything he has, present tense- not anything he might gain in the course of his successful future, but anything he has as of 4 December 1949. On that date, Paul assures the man, he has nothing anyone could possibly want. The man laughs, and wants to drink to congratulate Paul on his cleverness.

Back in the present, Barnabas is laughing as heartily as the other man did twenty years before. He finds it preposterous that Paul could have forgotten such an important encounter. Paul can’t see anything important in it- it was just a silly little game, and its only consequence was that a strange man bought him a drink. Barnabas says that on the contrary, the bargain he struck was quite real. The Leviathans kept their side of it by giving him the success he has had over the last twenty years. Now that the twenty years are up, the time has come for them to claim the most precious possession he had the night he fled Collinwood.

Paul says that he supposes Barnabas is talking about his soul. He laughs heartily at that, and tells Barnabas that he is welcome to it. He is telling Paul that that is not what he meant as Carolyn enters. Paul is still laughing, and is delighted to see his daughter. She says she is relieved that the two of them found each other, and he tells her everything will be all right now. Barnabas says that Carolyn is her father’s most precious possession.

The scenes of Paul rushing around in a steadily mounting panic he is unable to explain are highly reminiscent of The Twilight Zone. The last line is a twist worthy of that classic series, especially as delivered by Jonathan Frid. His icy performance as Barnabas in these early episodes of the Leviathan arc not only recalls the malign representatives of alien powers on that show, but is superb in itself. He stumbles a little over his words in Barnabas’ scene with Julia, but is perfectly composed otherwise, and the effect is quite frightening.

I remarked on the gay subtext of the barroom scenes in the comment thread on Danny Horn’s post about the episode at his great Dark Shadows Every Day:

So far, this has been the gayest storyline the show has taken on yet.

In 899, the sailor offers to buy Paul a drink, and Paul shouts “I buy my own drinks!” This isn’t subtext- any man getting that reaction in a bar will know that the other fellow has interpreted his offer as including more than the drink. Paul apologizes and becomes friendly, indicating that he is willing to abandon that interpretation and set aside the hostility that accompanied it.

In this episode, we’re back in the same bar. Barnabas beckons Paul to his table with his index finger. I invite any man who doesn’t think we are intended to read this as a reference to a sexual come-on to try that move on a homophobic tough guy in a bar.

Paul’s face shows his inner struggle as he tries to resist Barnabas’ advances, but he can’t. Barnabas coaxes him into reminiscing about yet another night in the same bar, when a casual encounter with yet another guy led to something that seemed at the time like a little harmless tomfoolery, but that has now grown into a threat to his relationship with his family, his standing in the community, his physical well-being, and everything else.

Comment by “Acilius,” left 12 December 2020 on Danny Horn, “Episode 900: The Long Con,” posted on Dark Shadows Every Day, 18 July 2016.

In response to someone who said some kind words about that comment, I made a remark that I no longer think is very good:

Thanks! It’s a bit of a puzzle- so far as I know, none of the writers on the show at this time was gay, so I’m not sure why they decided to go so deep into these themes just then.

Comment by “Acilius,” left 11 April 2021 on Danny Horn, “Episode 900: The Long Con,” posted on Dark Shadows Every Day, 18 July 2016.

What I think now, and probably would have thought then if I had stopped and considered it for a minute before I hit “Post Comment,” is that the writing staff’s sexuality has nothing to do with it. They were worldly, sophisticated people with long experience in the theatrical profession in New York City. They all probably had many gay friends, and when they are called upon to write a story about people being drawn into a secret underworld and learning uncomfortable truths about themselves in the process their minds will naturally turn to themes having to do with closeted homosexuality. Granted, that doesn’t fully account for Christopher Bernau’s decision to play Philip as a much queenier version of Paul Lynde, but it is hardly a “puzzle” that the writers would draw on motifs suggestive of the closet when that’s the story they have to work with.

The man who met Paul in the bar in 1949 is unnamed in today’s dialogue, but will later be referred to as Mr Strak. Strak is played by John Harkins, who appeared in #174 as Lieutenant Costa of the Arizona State Police and in #878, 879, 880, 881, and 883 as Garth Blackwood, formerly the keeper of England’s Dartmoor Prison, and by that time a creature raised from Hell to wreak vengeance on an escaped prisoner and anyone else who caught his attention.

Strak’s name may remind longtime viewers of another minor character whom we saw in episodes #1 and #2, Wilbur Strake, private eye. We saw Strake in this same bar, where he gave reports about Carolyn and other members of the Collins family to his employer, Burke Devlin. Like Strak, Strake was a rather smug, sardonic sort. Add to this the rarity of the names “Strak” and “Strake” and the fact that they sound so much alike, and it seems obvious that there is an intentional reference of some kind. Paul’s presence in this storyline is the result of the writers reaching back to the show’s early days to find a loose end they could attach to this storyline to incorporate it into the Collins family saga, so they probably were looking through the scripts from the first week. Still, I can’t imagine they thought many people would remember Wilbur Strake by this point. Likely the reference is an inside joke, but who was on the inside and what the point of the joke was, I can’t begin to guess.

I wasn’t writing detailed posts with background information when I covered the first weeks of the show, so I will mention here Strake was played by Joseph Julian, who later became a regular on Somerset, a soap that aired on NBC opposite Dark Shadows for the last year of its run. The cast of Somerset included several Dark Shadows alums, including Dennis Patrick, Joel Crothers, and Christopher Pennock in major roles, and, as day players, Dolph Sweet and Humbert Allen Astredo.