The evil Gregory Trask has married Judith Collins and become the master of the estate of Collinwood. Trask shows his daughter, the repressed Charity, her new home in the great house. In the drawing room, Trask tells Charity that he wants her to marry Judith’s brother, the rakish Quentin, to whom he refers as the one eligible bachelor remaining in the Collins family. This is odd- like his brother Quentin, Edward Collins is a widower, and unlike Quentin Edward is sufficiently conscious of the appearance of propriety that it would be relatively easy for the sanctimonious Trask to control him. Besides, Edward’s son Jamison is Judith’s heir, giving Trask a reason to keep a close eye on both of them.
Broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi enters and announces that she wants to speak with maidservant Beth Chavez. Trask says that he wants to talk to Magda alone in the drawing room. Charity wants to leave anyway; she hasn’t visited her mother’s grave today. Trask is worried because it is dark and both a vampire and a werewolf are loose on the grounds of the estate, but he and Charity decide it will probably be fine, so off she goes.
Trask gives Magda 24 hours to vacate her home in the Old House on the estate. She tells him she can prove that he murdered his first wife, prompting Trask to reconsider the eviction notice.
In the woods, Charity sees the werewolf, whom we know to be Quentin. She runs back home in a panic. Trask initially opposes Magda’s offer to walk Charity to her bedroom, but when she insists he crumbles. While Charity rests, Magda takes out her tarot deck and tells Charity she will read the cards for her. She brushes Charity’s objections aside as lightly as she had her father’s. She finds that Charity will be paired with an attractive man, but that this man is evil and that she must avoid him at all costs.
Charity has a dream in which she and Quentin speak tenderly to each other and kiss, only for him to zone out while a werewolf appears. The bulk of Charity’s dream consists of her and Quentin striking poses while the soundtrack plays the sickly little waltz Quentin obsessively plays on his gramophone, and David Selby’s voice recites some dreary lyrics that apparently go with it. This does nothing to explain the characters’ in-universe motivations, but it does explain the real-world reason why Dan Curtis wanted the writers to get the audience thinking of Charity and Quentin as a potential couple and to have her encounter the werewolf. In his post about the episode at Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn explains that the sequence is product placement for some records that were released around this time. It’s interesting that Charity has inherited so much of her father’s money-mindedness that she sells advertising time in her dreams, but the actual sequence is unbelievably tedious to watch.
Vampire Barnabas Collins happens upon his unwilling sidekick, ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi, after she has fired a silver bullet at his distant cousin, werewolf Quentin Collins. He sternly forbids her to finish Quentin off, and for some reason she decides he is right.
Back in human form, Quentin is haunted by the ghost of Dorcas Trilling, a woman he killed in his first night as a werewolf. He has been telling himself that the evil deeds of the werewolf are not his own responsibilities, but that “he” is the culprit. That comforts him, but Dorcas isn’t having it. So he instantly collapses into, “All right, I did, but I couldn’t help it!” That doesn’t go over any better.
Unfortunately, this is Gail Strickland’s final appearance on Dark Shadows. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Barnabas and Quentin have a confrontation. Barnabas tells Quentin that he knows his secret and says that he wants only to help him; Quentin angrily responds that he cannot trust Barnabas, who refuses to tell him anything about himself. He does ask Barnabas to kill him if it is the only way to keep him from turning into the werewolf again, so I suppose that is a step towards friendship.
In the spring of 1969, the twin crises created by the malign ghost of Quentin Collins and the werewolf curse upon drifter Chris Jennings had combined to kill a number of people, bring others to the point of death, and make life on the estate of Collinwood utterly intolerable. Recovering vampire Barnabas Collins and his friends found some I Ching wands in Quentin’s old room and tried to use them to communicate with the ghost. Instead, they caused Barnabas to come unstuck in time. In #701, Barnabas found himself in the year 1897, his own curse of vampirism once again in full force.
Today, Barnabas bites Quentin’s girlfriend, maidservant Beth Chavez, and makes her tell him everything she knows about the werewolf curse. He was in a position to know all of this before he bit her; much of it he could have figured out if he had been paying attention to the information available to him in the late 1960s. But the show has been gaining lots of new viewers lately, and they probably appreciate the recap.
Quentin was married to a woman named Jenny, who unknown to him was the sister of ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi. Quentin left Jenny in 1895. Neither Quentin nor Magda knew at that time that Jenny was pregnant. Quentin’s siblings Edward and Judith put the story out that Jenny had gone away, and locked her up in a room hidden in the house. They enlisted Beth, her former maid, to be Jenny’s keeper. By the time she gave birth to boy-girl twins, Jenny had gone entirely insane.
In #720, Jenny escaped and stabbed Quentin. She escaped again in #748, and Quentin strangled her. When Magda found out that Quentin had killed Jenny, she cursed him and his male descendants to be werewolves. In #763, Beth told Magda about the twins; Magda’s reaction made it clear to Beth that she was powerless to lift the curse. Regular viewers already know that. The audience first heard Magda’s name months before she appeared on the show, when she spoke at a séance in #642 and expressed deep regret about “my currrrrse,” which we knew to be connected to both Quentin and the werewolf. In #684 and #685, Barnabas found a silver pentagram that Quentin and Beth bought in 1897 on a chain around the neck of a dead baby, and identified it as an amulet to ward off werewolves. Barnabas learned yesterday that Beth had bought the pentagram, and she confirms today that it is for Quentin’s son to wear. She also bought a similar pendant for herself, and is wearing it.
There is a full moon tonight, and most of the episode is taken up with the mechanics of people getting ready to go into the woods to hunt the werewolf, coming back from the woods where they have been hunting the werewolf, and telephoning to ask others to join in hunting the werewolf.
Magda has a pistol and loads it with silver bullets. Some wonder where Magda came up with silver bullets, but in a comment on Danny Horn’s post about the episode at Dark Shadows Every Day someone posting as “cslh324” reminds us that in #757 Magda persuaded undead blonde fire witch Laura to give her the money to buy silver bullets with which to shoot Barnabas. One of Magda’s purposes in putting this plan forward was to get Laura to leave her alone in the room so that she could steal a magical doodad from her, but it turns out Magda really did buy the silver bullets.
The werewolf gets into the great house of Collinwood and attacks Judith. Beth shows up in the nick of time and shows the werewolf her pentagram. He flees. Judith asks why the werewolf would run away from her, and Beth refuses to explain. At first she denies that it happened, then she asserts that the werewolf is probably as afraid of them as they are of him.
The confrontation between Judith and the werewolf includes a spectacular stunt. The werewolf jumps over the railing on the walkway above the foyer and holds a stationary two-point landing on the floor twelve feet below. Alex Stevens deserves high praise for that.
When we hear the sound effects associated with the werewolf or see the consequences of his attacks or catch a glimpse of him as a blur in the middle of a cloud of shattering glass, we can be afraid of him. Unfortunately, the show often gives us a long look at him, and he is not scary at all. They didn’t have the schedule or the makeup budget to cover his whole body in fur, so he wears Quentin’s suit. Seeing him standing there in that little outfit you don’t want Magda to shoot him with her silver bullets. At most, you might swat him with a rolled-up newspaper and tell him he is a bad doggie.
You have to stop killing people, or you won’t get any more bickies! Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Beth does not want Judith to suspect that Quentin is the werewolf, but it really doesn’t make any sense that she won’t tell her about the apotropaic power of the silver pentagram. You’d think she would want everyone on the estate and in the neighboring village of Collinsport to wear such pendants for the duration of Quentin’s curse. Surely she could come up with some explanation as to how she knew about the silver pentagram that wouldn’t invite questions she couldn’t answer.
The Kindest, Warmest, Bravest, Most Wonderful Human Being I’ve Ever Known in My Life
The show is doing an homage to The Manchurian Candidate this week, with schoolteacher Tim Shaw brainwashed into becoming an assassin when he sees the Queen of Spades. We open with the plan going awry. Lawyer/ warlock Evan Hanley did the brainwashing with the intention that Tim would kill someone else, but when he shows Tim the card, Tim tries to kill him. As Evan, Humbert Allen Astredo shows us a man suddenly becoming frightened and just as suddenly making up his mind to be brave. In other episodes, Astredo has already shown us Evan responding to fear in other ways. He really was a remarkably good actor, and it is a pleasure to see how much variety he can find in his parts.
Later, we see Judith Collins, the mistress of Collinwood, playing solitaire. Tim comes to the house. We know that each episode ends with a cliffhanger, and so this leads us to expect that we will end today with Tim’s hands around Judith’s throat. But that is a misdirection. In fact, Judith turns the Queen of Spades away from Tim at the last second, and he leaves the room without attacking her.
Slight Enough to Vanish, But Too Dense to Live
Tim’s brainwashing is a B-story on the show right now, and it would throw off the rhythm of the week to end two consecutive episodes with cliffhangers from it. The A-story is about the rakish Quentin Collins, who has been cursed to become a werewolf. There is a full moon tonight, and the sheriff’s department is roaming the grounds of the great estate of Collinwood with guns looking for the wolf who walks like a man. Joining in the search is Quentin’s distant cousin, Barnabas Collins, who is, unknown to all but a very few people, a vampire. Barnabas has traveled back in time to the year 1897, and among the things he is hoping to do is to learn how the werewolf curse that has afflicted his friend Chris Jennings in the 1960s first began.
Barnabas learned in 1969 that in 1897 Quentin and a woman named Beth Chavez paid a man named Ezra Braithwaite to make a silver pendant in the form of a pentagram and that a baby boy was buried in that year wearing that pendant. Tonight, Ezra telephones Barnabas at the great house of Collinwood and tells him that Beth just came in, ordered such a pendant, and told him to send the bill to Quentin.
Barnabas knows that the pentagram was an amulet meant to ward off werewolves. Beth is Quentin’s girlfriend, a fact that is no secret to anyone, not even Barnabas. So you might assume Barnabas would have figured out that Quentin is the werewolf. But apparently he has not. He materializes inside Beth’s room and demands she tells him who the werewolf is. When she refuses, he bites her. That bite is the cliffhanger.
Barnabas occasionally makes remarks about how he wants to keep the original timeline intact so that the people he knew in the 1960s will still be there when he gets back. But he’s been feasting on the people he meets in 1897 with abandon. Beth is the fourth resident of Collinwood he has bitten, and he has killed at least two young women in the village. Moreover, his approach to every problem he encounters or imagines is to confront the most powerful person associated with it and antagonize them immediately. It’s hard to see how he expects anything to remain unchanged after he inserts this rampage into the history of the late Victorian age.
But You Wouldn’t Know Anything About That
Judith tells Barnabas today that Beth came to Collinwood as a lady’s maid two years ago. Beth claims to have a cousin in town to Judith today while lying to cover up her trip to Braithwaite’s, and when Barnabas asks Judith if Beth is from Collinsport she mentions this cousin as her reason for believing that she is. Judith clearly knows very little about Beth, and cares less.
The lady who brought Beth as her maid was Quentin’s then-wife, Jenny, who was secretly a member of the Romani people. In #701 it was hinted that Beth was concealing a Romani origin of her own. Casting the tall, blonde, blue-eyed, pale Terrayne Crawford as Beth would seem to indicate that they were not committed to following up this hint, but in today’s scenes with Judith they do go out of their way to emphasize that Beth’s background is a mystery.
The Woman Who Never Left
Beth has been helping the family hide the fact that Jenny went mad and bore twins after Quentin left her. Quentin murdered Jenny in #748, eliminating the need for a servant to cover up her existence, and the twins, about whom Quentin does not know, are firmly ensconced in the care of a woman in the village named Mrs Fillmore. In #750, Judith fired Beth, but it didn’t take. Beth never left the house, and after a while the family started giving her orders again. Today Beth tells Judith that Mrs Fillmore reports that the boy twin is feverish, and asks to be kept on staff until he gets well. Judith agrees.
Judith tells Beth that she has decided to tell Quentin about the twins. She hopes that is what will prompt her brother to cast aside his selfish ways and become a mature adult. Beth is horrified and begs her not to do so. Judith, puzzled, says that Beth has always urged her to tell Quentin. She asks why she has changed her mind, and she makes up something obviously false about Quentin being unable to cope with the news that his son has a fever.
Yesterday, Beth learned that Quentin’s curse is hereditary. Returning viewers might wonder if she is afraid that Quentin will also learn that, and that if he does he might kill his children to prevent them passing it on. He does keep saying that he would rather be dead than have the curse, so he might talk himself into regarding such a murder as an act of mercy.
Featuring Edward Marshall as Ezra Braithwaite
Edward Marshall plays Ezra, a part played in #684 and #685 as an 87 year old man living in the year 1969 by Abe Vigoda (who was 48 at the time, but he and the makeup department both knew their business well enough that he was entirely convincing.) Mr Marshall appeared in #669 as unsightly ex-convict Harry Johnson, a part originally created by the not-always-stellar Craig Slocum. Mr Marshall gave Harry the same attitude and many of the same mannerisms Slocum had given him, but was so much more fun to watch that I wanted to see a lot more of him.
Parts of Harry’s costume and most of his surly demeanor are recycled in the 1897 segment in the character of dimwitted groundskeeper Dirk Wilkins, played by the repulsive Roger Davis. Whenever Dirk is on screen, I imagine Mr Marshall in Mr Davis’ place. I recommend that bit of mental recasting, it goes a long way towards making Dirk bearable. Unfortunately this is Mr Marshall’s final appearance on Dark Shadows.
Schoolteacher Tim Shaw was introduced in #731. The name “Shaw” is common enough that few viewers are likely to have found any significance in it at the time. It is true that Dark Shadows is at this point a costume drama set in 1897 and that George Bernard Shaw was coming into his own as a playwright in that year. The show was written, acted, and directed largely by theater people, and is so self-consciously stagy that it is possible there might be a reference of some kind to Bernard Shaw in a character’s name. But there doesn’t seem to be anything especially Shavian about Tim.
Today we learn the reason Tim was called Shaw. Satanist Evan Hanley gives Tim a potion that robs him of his will. He holds up a deck of playing cards and tells him that when he sees the Queen of Spades he will know it is time for him to murder someone. In Richard Condon’s 1959 novel The Manchurian Candidate, soldier Raymond Shaw was brainwashed into becoming an assassin when he saw the Queen of Hearts; in the John Frankenheimer’s 1962 film based on the novel, Raymond’s trigger was the Queen of Diamonds.
Frankenheimer’s film is one of the supreme examples of a movie that shouldn’t have worked, but did. No part of the plot stands up to rational analysis for one second, but when the tale is told through stark black and white imagery that puts us deep in the world of a nightmare it is spellbinding. Unfortunately, the irrationality of the plan the villains carry out and of the other characters’ responses to their evil deeds in The Manchurian Candidate are on full display in this homage, without the paranoid verve that makes the movie compelling. All by itself the potion puts Tim so deep in Evan’s power that he gladly goes to witch Magda Rákóczi to buy poison and insists she sell it to him even after she has pointed out that it is useful for nothing but murder. It doesn’t seem there is anything left for the card to add to the control Evan has over him.
It gets worse. Evan is acting as the agent of the evil Rev’d Gregory Trask. Trask is unhappily married to a woman named Minerva, and is blackmailing Evan into sending an assassin to kill her. When Evan shows Tim the card today, he confirms that the intended victim is a woman. But why not have him kill Trask? As my wife, Mrs Acilius, points out, if Trask dies, Evan will be free of the threat of blackmail. So if he is prepared to be a party to murder, you’d think he would forget Minerva and commit the crime he has a motive to commit.
The highlight of today’s episode doesn’t have anything to do with Evan, Tim, Minerva, or Trask. It is a scene between Magda and sometime maidservant Beth.
Beth has come to the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood to plead with Magda to lift a curse she has placed on Beth’s boyfriend, rakish Quentin Collins. Quentin murdered his estranged wife, Magda’s sister Jenny, and as revenge Magda turned him into a werewolf. Magda is unimpressed with anything Beth says until she tells her that in spite of everything, she will marry Quentin and go away with him. Magda marvels at this and asks Beth if she will really go through with it knowing that any son Quentin might have will suffer from the same curse. Shocked, Beth asks Magda if she means what she has said, and she repeats that Quentin’s son will also be a werewolf. Beth replies that in that case, Magda has laid a curse upon her own kin.
Magda dismisses this, saying that Jenny had no children by Quentin. Beth says she is wrong, that Jenny bore twins, a boy and a girl. Beth lays the story out systematically, and it dawns on Magda that she is telling the truth. Magda calls out to Jenny’s spirit and begs forgiveness, saying she did not know. Beth says that it is time to lift the curse, and Magda tells her to get a pentagram and make sure the boy wears it all the days of his life. Beth has her own moment of horrified realization. “And… you can’t end it? Can you?”
Beth realizes Magda does not know how to undo the curse.
Terrayne Crawford had some weaknesses as an actress that severely undercut her in her first weeks as Beth. But this scene is right in her wheelhouse. She is flawless as she portrays Beth’s progression from weepy begging to methodical explanation to utter shock. And Grayson Hall of course brings great power and vivid color to Magda.
We’ve been waiting for this scene since #642, months before Magda first appeared in #701, let alone before she placed the curse on Quentin in #750. In that episode, back in December 1968, the show took place in a contemporary setting. The characters had noticed some strange goings-on, and held a séance as part of their inquiry. The spirit they reached was Magda, who spoke regretfully of “my currrrse!” It’s taken more than 24 weeks, but Magda has finally learned what she already knew when we first heard from her.
Twelve year old Jamison Collins has run away from the unspeakably horrible boarding school where he has been imprisoned, and erstwhile lady’s maid Beth Chavez thinks he might be in the woods on the grounds of the great estate of Collinwood. Beth knows that her boyfriend, Jamison’s uncle Quentin, is in those woods. She also knows that Quentin is a werewolf, so she has gone out with a gun to protect Jamison from him. She does not know that the gun will stop a werewolf only if it fires silver bullets, so she is in trouble when she comes face to face with Quentin in his lupine form.
Luckily for Beth, Jamison’s father, the stuffy Edward, and his distant cousin, the mysterious and recently arrived Barnabas, happen by. They distract the werewolf, and Barnabas beats him with the silver head of his cane. The werewolf runs off, and Barnabas gives chase. Edward calls him back. Edward tells Barnabas he will need a gun to fight the werewolf, and Barnabas replies that the head of the cane will be enough. Edward demurs, saying that will work only once. Barnabas can’t very well tell the quotidian Edward that silver is the only weapon that is effective against werewolves, still less that he learned this while fighting a werewolf in the year 1969 and that he has traveled back in time to 1897 to stop the werewolf curse at its origin. Even if he somehow convinced Edward of this lunatic story, he would only increase the likelihood that a further uncanny truth would be revealed, namely that he himself is a vampire. So Barnabas helps Edward carry Beth back to the great house on the estate.
There, Barnabas decides that Jamison has probably gone to visit his mother Laura, who is staying in the groundskeeper’s cottage due to her estrangement from Edward. Indeed, we have seen Jamison there, talking with Laura about going away from Collinwood with her. Barnabas suspects what the audience is in a position to know, that Laura is an undead blonde fire witch who periodically incinerates herself and her children so that she, but not they, may rise and live again as a humanoid Phoenix. Another iteration of Laura was on Dark Shadows from December 1966 to March 1967, when the show took place in a contemporary setting. When Laura tells Jamison about the place to which she will take him, longtime viewers will hear echoes of what that other Laura told her son David in #140 about a land that “some call Paradise.”
A bat squeaks outside the window of the cottage, and Barnabas materializes inside. They haven’t tried this effect in quite a while. When they did it in #341, they superimposed the image of Barnabas in the wrong place on the screen, so that he looked like he was about four feet tall. That Mini-Bar was not very intimidating. But they get it right this time, and it makes for an effective moment.
Laura emerges from the bedroom, and is indignant to see Barnabas. He bluntly tells her that he knows she is a mortal threat to her children, Jamison and his sister Nora. He tells her he will take them from her. She says she is sure that he is capable of “tricks,” but says that she has some of her own. She causes him to suffer intense heat. He recovers, and a groggy Jamison comes staggering out of the bedroom. Barnabas grabs Jamison and sets out for the great house. When Laura again mentions her “tricks,” he replies menacingly that “You have not known mine!” Laura vows to have her revenge.
The original 1966-1967 Laura story was the first plot on Dark Shadows to be driven by a supernatural character from beginning to end, and it did involve some confrontations between Laura and the ghost of the gracious Josette. But it was nearly as slow-paced, understated, and heavily atmospheric as were the relatively naturalistic stories that preceded it. That other Laura was the right menace for a show like that. She did not come with the established imagery of familiar movie monsters like vampires and werewolves, nor was there any reason to expect her to generate a lot of violent confrontations or special effects. Despite her association with fire, Laura was a cool presence on screen. She fit with a sedate tone and appealed to an adult audience interested in the long arcs of character development. When the 1897 Laura zaps a vampire who himself just fought a werewolf, there is no coolness anywhere. The show is meant primarily for children now, and they want the heat action and imagery generate when they are packed tight into each minute. Diana Millay is certainly up to the job, though it is a shame she doesn’t have the same opportunities she had in early 1967 to display her gifts for dry comedy and subtle psychological drama.
Before Dark Shadows became a costume drama set in 1897, we learned about a number of things erstwhile lady’s maid Beth Chavez had done in that year, none of which she has yet had a chance to do. So when yesterday’s cliffhanger left Beth alone in a small room with her boyfriend Quentin Collins after he had turned into a werewolf, we could be fairly sure she would somehow escape. In today’s opening teaser, we see that she stumbles into the middle of a pentagram that was chalked onto a rug as part of an abortive effort to contain Quentin’s lycanthropy. The werewolf paws at the space above the pentagram, but cannot enter it. As a stunt performer, Alex Stevens must have had considerable occasion to practice miming, but I guess there’s only so much you can do with the old “I’m trapped in an invisible box!” routine. He gives up, goes to the door, turns the knob, and leaves.
After this comic start, the episode turns to the grimmest story they have going. Twelve year old Jamison Collins has been sent to a boarding school that the overwhelmingly evil Rev’d Gregory Trask operates as a dungeon for the torment of children and teachers alike. Jamison has been confined to a closet and kept on a diet of bread and water until he confesses to offenses Trask knows full well he did not commit. The closet adjoins the classroom where teacher Tim Shaw works. Trask’s daughter Charity, temporarily in charge of the school in her father’s absence, sees Tim in the room with some papers; she offers to help him grade them, but he says he needs to go through them himself to judge the students’ progress. When she leaves him there, he smuggles food to Jamison.
Charity catches on, and gives Jamison her father’s “favorite book of meditations” to read while in confinement. She tells him he will have “ample time to browse through it” before her father returns and decrees his additional punishment in the morning. Since the book is about 8 inches thick, it must be in very large print. It is a bit difficult to imagine speed-reading a book of meditations. (“Meditate faster!”)
Charity gives Jamison something to read during the night.
In fact, the book is so thick Jamison can use it as a step to reach a window through which he escapes. Charity is distraught when she realizes that he is gone, and Tim is gleeful to see that he used Trask’s Big Book o’ Meditations to get away.
Charity assumes that Jamison has run back home to the great house of Collinwood. She orders Tim to accompany her there. Beth lets them in and tells them she hasn’t seen Jamison. In her imperious manner, Charity demands that Beth let them search the house, and dismisses out of hand her reply that she does not have the authority to permit such a thing.
In fact, Jamison did come to the house, and Beth is covering for him. He knows the place well enough that even if Charity did have free rein to search for him she probably wouldn’t find him. Jamison went into the drawing room when Charity and Tim came. Charity insists Beth let them into the drawing room. She is disappointed that Jamison isn’t there, and says he must have gone out the window. Regular viewers know that there is a secret passage leading from the drawing room to the west wing, and that the west wing has a myriad of hiding places.
Evidently Beth is unaware of that passage, because she seems to believe Charity is right. She is afraid that Jamison is in the woods, where she knows the werewolf is roaming, and once Charity and Tim have left she goes out there with a gun. Again, those who have been watching the show know something Beth does not, that the gun is formidable to the werewolf only if it is loaded with silver bullets. When she finds the werewolf and points the gun at him, we again come to a cliffhanger ending that leaves Beth’s life in jeopardy.
Libertine Quentin Collins murdered his wife Jenny the other day, shortly after he learned that she was the sister of broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi. Since Quentin is convinced that Magda has magical powers, this would seem to suggest a low degree of impulse control on his part.
Magda did place a curse on Quentin, and she refuses to tell him what it is. Last night he doubled over in pain, lost consciousness, and disappeared from the great house on the estate of Collinwood. This morning he has shown up in the foyer, flat on his back, his clothing in shreds and blood all over him. His girlfriend, Jenny’s former maid Beth, found him and helped him to his room. Neither of them can figure out what happened to him overnight.
Meanwhile, Collins family attorney Evan Hanley has come to meet with Quentin’s sister Judith, who owns the estate and the Collins family’s businesses. Judith is enraged that Quentin took $10,000 from her in return for signing an agreement to leave the house and never come back, but has refused either to leave or to return the money. Evan assures Judith he will take care of the matter at once. While he is still in the drawing room, Judith answers the telephone. She learns that a young woman named Dorcas Trilling was brutally killed on the estate the night before, her body ripped apart as if by a wild animal of some kind.
Unknown to Judith, Evan and Quentin are members of a Satanist coven. Evan does call on Quentin and Beth in Quentin’s room, and he does deliver Judith’s message. He and Quentin both ask Beth to leave so they can discuss another matter. At first she resists, but finally she does go. Quentin tells him what happened the night before and that he believes Magda has cursed him. Evan sees the bloody clothing in a pile on the floor, and his face shows a grim surmise. Nonetheless, he does not tell Quentin about Dorcas.
Quentin asks Evan to help him with Magda. Evan says that he will do so, but cautions Quentin that his help will come at a very high price. Quentin asks what happened to their friendship. Evan tells him that “There is no such thing as a friend” and laughs. That must come as quite a nasty shock to Quentin. You spend time with a fellow conjuring up demons, forging wills, and working together to impoverish half your family and kill the other half, and you think you mean something to each other. But no, it just isn’t that way with Evan.
Evan calls on Magda at the Old House on the estate. Magda is coy and does not tell him anything he does not already know, but he does notice that she is wearing a pendant in the form of a pentagram. She says it is just a bit of Romani jewelry, worth only a few cents. He offers her a hundred dollars for it. She refuses, saying that it was a gift from her late mother, and offers to show him other pieces of the same type. Evan tells her that he knows the pentagram can protect against many supernatural menaces, and asks which one she is guarding against at the moment. She keeps mum.
Back in Quentin’s room, Evan chalks a pentagram all over his rug. He tells Quentin and Beth that at nightfall, they must set two black candles burning, one in each of two points of the pentagram, and Quentin must take up a position in the center of the pentagram. He must not move from this spot until daybreak.
The year is 1897, and the first vacuum cleaner wasn’t invented until 1901. It’s going to be quite a job to clean that rug. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Quentin is having an anxiety attack, and refuses to cooperate with Evan’s plan. This is consistent with his character as we have seen it so far. In #710, he and Evan summoned a creature to rise from Hell and smite one of their enemies, and when a form actually started to take shape, he panicked and tried to run away. Quentin is obsessed with black magic and the occult, but when it turns out there is something to all of his spells and incantations, he cannot bring himself to face the reality of it.
Quentin declares that he wants a plan that “makes sense.” He then says they have to kill Magda. Evan replies that that is the worst thing they could possibly do. If they kill Magda, there will never be any way to lift the curse.
Later that night, Beth and Quentin are still in the room. The pains come on Quentin again. She hurriedly picks up the chalk and redraws the parts pentagram that Quentin had smudged, then sets a chair in the middle. She tries to get Quentin into that chair, but he is unable to get himself onto the seat. She turns to look for the black candles, then hears snarling and growling. She turns to the spot off camera where Quentin is, and reacts with horror. We know that Quentin is a werewolf; now she knows it, too. As the closing credits roll, it does not seem likely that she will have much chance to make use of that knowledge.
Libertine Quentin Collins presents himself as maidservant Beth Chavez’ great love. He wants her to run away with him and make a new life together, and to do so right now, before the curse he brought upon himself by murdering his wife in front of Beth kicks in. She is inclined to go along with him, but he collapses in agony before they can leave her room.
Teacher Dorcas Trilling presents herself as the most faithful devotee of the Rev’d Gregory Trask, keeper of a brutal dungeon for children disguised as a boarding school called Worthington Hall. Dorcas asks Trask why he keeps her disobedient colleague Rachel Drummond on the faculty. Trask tells Dorcas that he thinks of Rachel as a thorn in his flesh. She stirs up his basest impulses. Regular viewers know how true this is- in their scenes together, Trask has not only extorted Rachel to come to work for him, but has repeatedly made it clear that he wants to force her into a sexual relationship as well. But the base impulse he admits to in his conversation with Dorcas is anger at Rachel’s wickedness. He says that he keeps her around as a way of building his resistance to the sin of wrath. Dorcas takes the bait, and declares that it makes her admire Trask all the more.
Rachel presents herself as the protector of twelve year old Jamison Collins, heir presumptive to spinster Judith Collins as the owner of the great estate of Collinwood and the Collins family’s business enterprises. She slips out of Worthington Hall, which is currently operating from a house on the estate, in order to tell Judith that Trask has falsely accused Jamison of academic misconduct and is refusing to feed him until he confesses. As it happens, Trask confirmed to Dorcas that this is true, and said that by forcing Jamison to confess to something he did not do he will teach him humility. Dorcas is so far gone that this admission of loathsome injustice adds further to her admiration for Trask.
Beth presents herself as Quentin’s representative in a telephone call to the doctor. When she finds that the doctor is out, she urges his assistant to call back as soon as possible. She is about to go back to check on Quentin when Rachel comes to the great house looking for Judith or for Jamison’s father Edward. Beth tells her that they are out, and that there is an extreme emergency in progress. Rachel accompanies her to the room. They find that it is in a shambles and Quentin is gone. They return to the foyer, where the telephone rings. Beth is disappointed it is not the doctor. It is Trask, and he asks to speak to Rachel. Beth hands her the telephone.
Trask presents himself to Rachel as her “most concerned friend.” He also reminds her of his threat to frame her on charges of theft and murder, and demands she return to the school at once. As she has done before, she crumbles and rushes off. Beth watches her go with puzzlement, as others have done on those previous occasions.
Dorcas presents herself as a spy and enforcer for Trask. After Trask tells Rachel he has docked her a week’s pay for trying to feed Jamison against his orders, Rachel catches Dorcas listening at the door. Rachel leaves the room after their confrontation. We see Dorcas alone for a moment, then hear a window breaking and see her horrified reaction. We hear growling and snarling. Rachel comes in, Trask follows, and they see Dorcas’ mangled corpse. Returning viewers know that Quentin’s curse is that he has become a werewolf. Dorcas is his first victim.
Dorcas is played by Gail Strickland, who went on to have a huge career on TV in the 1970s and 1980s. Miss Strickland is a fine actress, and it is a terrible shame she wasn’t on the show more. Terrayne Crawford, who plays Beth, is good today, but she could really only project one emotion at a time. That is a grave weakness in this part of Dark Shadows, when most characters have complex motivations in almost every scene. In Miss Strickland’s hands, several scenes that were flat and tedious due to Miss Crawford’s literalist acting style would have been exciting and nuanced. Beth was originally seen as a ghost who did not speak but made an impression by her stark yet lovely features. Miss Strickland’s looks could have that effect as well as did Miss Crawford’s. Indeed, I suspect she must have attracted the producers’ attention when they were deciding between the two of them for the role of Beth.
As of this writing, every member of today’s cast is still alive. When you’re watching a show and posting about it on the 56th anniversary of its original airdate, that’s an unusual thing to see. I believe it is the first such episode we have come upon.
In the Old House on the estate of Collinwood, nine year old Amy Jennings pops into her governess’ bedroom in the morning. The governess, Maggie Evans, hasn’t been to bed yet. Maggie’s other charge, twelve year old David Collins, disappeared into the haunted corridors of the great house on the estate some time ago, and cannot be found. The evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins has been possessing David and Amy off and on for many weeks, and has now grown so powerful that no one dares go into the great house alone. Maggie is too worried to go to bed.
Maggie questions Amy about David and Quentin. Amy tries to deny knowing anything about Quentin, but Maggie keeps up the pressure until Amy admits she is afraid that if she talks, Quentin will do something to her big brother Chris Jennings. Permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman overhears this admission, and demands to know what Quentin has to do with Chris.
Julia knows something neither Maggie nor Amy does. Chris is a werewolf. As Quentin’s power over the children and the great house has grown, so has Chris’ lycanthropy spread over more of the month. For the past several years, Chris took his wolf form only for the two or three nights the moon was fullest, never for more than four nights, and never during any other lunar phase. Now he has started changing even when the moon is new. What is more, Julia and her friend, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, just came from the chamber where they coop Chris up when he is the werewolf. They found that he has not changed back even though the sun has been up for two hours. They have no way of knowing when or if Chris will ever be human again.
Amy won’t tell Julia or Maggie anything more about Quentin or about Quentin’s fellow ghost, Beth. Amy has communicated with Beth, knows her name, and she and David first saw Beth with Quentin. She knows also that Beth weeps when she thinks of Chris suffering. For their part, Julia and Barnabas saw Beth when she led them to save Chris when Quentin had tried to kill him. Chris told them that Beth had appeared to him, and when he took Barnabas to the spot where that happened he and Barnabas found a shovel and excavated the unmarked grave of an infant wearing a pendant meant to ward off werewolves. Julia saw a photograph of Beth in an old Collins family album, dated 1897, the same year Quentin disappeared. If they could combine Amy’s knowledge about Beth with what they have learned from these three experiences, Barnabas and Julia might get somewhere.
Julia and Amy leave, and Maggie goes to bed. As she lies under the covers, we see visual effects that might have been impressive on daytime television in 1969, but that we all got pretty sick of seeing people use on video calls in 2020. The picture wiggles in the middle and a transparent sticker of Quentin’s face sweeps around the screen.
Maggie has a dream. Dream sequences on Dark Shadows are usually messages sent to the dreamer by some supernatural force; the sticker of Quentin’s face suggests at first that he is the sender of this message. Maggie goes to a room in the long-deserted west wing of the great house. She was in the room in #680, and saw Quentin there. When she took matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and David to the room in #681, there was a tailor’s dummy wearing Quentin’s frock coat, with a face and mutton chops painted on it. Liz was glad to believe that the dummy was what Maggie saw, and David nattered on about how he and Amy called the dummy “Mr Juggins.” In her dream, Maggie recognizes Mr Juggins, then sees an opening in the wall.
She goes through it, and finds a hidden chamber. Quentin is there. Quentin tried to strangle Maggie in #691, and earlier this week he dressed her up in a lovely outfit and did her hair in an elaborate up-do, so there’s really no telling what is going to happen when the two of them are alone together. This time, he kisses her passionately, and from the way she relaxes in his arms it is clear he is doing a great job.
Awake, Maggie tells Julia about her dream. This will bring back memories for longtime viewers. When we first saw Julia in #265, she was Maggie’s psychiatrist, and was asking her about, among other things, her dreams. The same viewers will have been marveling at the fact that Maggie is staying in the room of the Old House once occupied by the gracious Josette and now dominated by Josette’s portrait. In May and June of 1967, Barnabas was a vampire. He held Maggie prisoner in Josette’s room as part of his scheme to erase her personality and replace it with Josette’s. Julia hypnotized Maggie into forgetting that whole ordeal, and the show has recently been assuring us that they will not revisit the question of whether her memory will return. Putting her back in the room is their most heavy-handed way yet of telling us to stop wondering about that.
Maggie’s discussion with Julia also raises the question of who sent the dream. Had she responded to it by slipping out to the west wing without telling anyone where she was going, we could believe that Quentin was luring her to him by showing her what a good kisser he is. But this conference makes it clear that Maggie is not only consciously determined to do battle against Quentin, but that she is enlisting the support of the allies likeliest to make headway against him. Beth has done a great deal to warn people against Quentin, so she might have sent the dream. Since Maggie is in Josette’s room and the closing credits will run over a shot centered on Josette’s portrait, it is also possible that Josette’s ghost has returned to the business of sending dream warnings.
Once Maggie figures out where Quentin’s chamber is, she decides that David must be there. She resolves to go to the chamber and find David. Julia tells her it is too dangerous for the two of them to go to Quentin’s stronghold alone, and insists they wait until Barnabas can join them. Julia goes to fetch Barnabas. When she brings him back to the Old House, Maggie says that now she can’t find Amy. Julia decides to look for Amy while Maggie and Barnabas go to the great house.
It might seem odd that Julia thinks it is OK for Maggie to go to the great house accompanied only by Barnabas when it would have been too dangerous had she herself been Maggie’s only companion. But Julia knows that Barnabas is not an ordinary man. He has been free of the effects of the vampire curse for almost a year, but his history made it possible for him to travel back in time in #661. It seems that he retains enough connection with the supernatural to make him a more formidable adversary for Quentin than is even so adroit a mad scientist as Julia.
Amy overhears Maggie’s conversations, and she goes to the west wing. She uses a crowbar to open the panel that leads to Quentin’s chamber. She goes in and calls for David. David is not there, but Quentin is. Amy tries to tell Quentin that she had come to warn him that Maggie and Barnabas were on their way; as her attempt to lie to Maggie had crumbled when Maggie kept questioning her, so her attempt to deceive Quentin collapses as he keeps staring at her. Amy’s face goes blank, and we realize that Quentin is transmitting commands into her mind.
Barnabas and Maggie do go to the room and they do find the opening in the panel. Barnabas looks through it, and sees a door on the other side. The opening is a small one, close to the floor. The children have been crawling through it, and evidently Maggie did the same in her dream. But Barnabas does not intend to get his suit dirty. He picks up the crowbar, and says he will rip out all the panels and walk through the door.
Dark Shadows Commentary 