The Dark Shadows Daybook: Oct. 12

Taped on this date in 1969: Episode 871 

By PATRICK McCRAY

As Angelique explains how she made Barnabas a new man, Charles Delaware-Tate reluctantly shows Count Petofi the proper way to ‘69. Count Petofi: David Selby. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Kitty Soames manifests the spirit of Josette to such an extent that she and Barnabas seem nearly reunited, and it feels so good, perhaps because Barnabas understood. But what? That, Angelique explains when she tells Quentin how she faked Barnabas’ staking by creating a duplicate of him while she cured the other of her own curse. Meanwhile, Petofi forces Charles Delaware-Tate to throw the I Ching wands, and the 49th hexagram at last appears, taking the artist into visions of 1969. Petofi now knows how to transport himself there, and he roars with triumphant anticipation of his destiny in the future.

871 makes me appreciate just how elaborate Dark Shadows actually is. It also makes me wish the rest of the show were more like 871. There is not one frame of subtlety to be found. Even if the line delivery is occasionally muted, the writing is not, and it makes me appreciate Sam Hall and Gordon Russell all the more. The episode’s writer, Violet Welles, was their amanuensis -- Barnabas taught me that word -- and by just inhaling the creative fumes coming off their conversations and creations, she may be the show’s best writer and secret weapon. 

And she doesn’t have time for nuance. Sometimes, god love ‘em, Sam and Gordon had the other characters in prior episodes suck the wind out of the series with talk-talk-talk. That’s what happens when you fill ten weeks of programming with ten hours of actual plot. Because, perhaps, she had fewer shots at being produced, Violet Welles is a writer who’s got a lot to accomplish, thank you. And if anyone opens their mouth around here, it had better be to advance the plot or FINALLY explain what in Sam Hall is going on over at the Old Mill at this time of night. 

This episode is almost all payoff. Sam and Gordon were wrapping up 1897, the show’s finest hours of entertainment and imagination, with a length of nearly 175 episodes. That’s almost the duration of the entire series before Barnabas was introduced. They (and the other writers) must have been led staggering out of their office to this “day off.”  I can see interns putting little capes on them like James Brown’s pit crew helping the equally spent legend off stage at the end of a concert. They were probably led to typewriters elsewhere to keep working on House of Dark Shadows’ latest draft. 

This isn’t the last episode of 1897, but it’s awfully close. Might as well be. Violet’s assignment must have been a bittersweet compliment. To get that far, and then hand it over to someone else? Was there envy? Pride for a colleague? Relief? All of those things are probably too interesting. It was probably just business. It’s very easy to gaze at art on a deeper level than the artist ever did. “Theatre,” I was told, “is art. Television is a piece of furniture.” 

That was a truism within the tv business, itself. For Sam, Gordon and company, it was more than likely another day at a good gig, one that fans liked far more than they did. And how can we not with 871? It begins by rooting us in the core mythos, and giving our hero what he’s wanted since we met him: Josette. Yes, okay, she’s supposed to marry Edward, but, well, Edward’s no Jeremiah. And, yes, she’s having flashforwards to being Kitty again. That’s pork chops and applesauce compared to barriers that Barnabas has faced before, including sending his soul backwards by nearly a century to be intentionally trapped in a sealed coffin. But even the few lines of happiness we see are an emotional banquet we’ve wanted for nearly five hundred episodes. Barnabas isn’t the only one who’s been waiting. 

The big news follows right after, which is the narrative of how Angelique both cured Barnabas of vampirism and arranged for him to be staked... without causing him actual harm. It’s a monologued montage that deserves a Lalo Schifrin score, and Lara Parker walks away with it. Unusual for Dark Shadows, it includes flashback pieces featuring the actors who are, themselves, in the narration. Normally, DS takes us behind the magician’s curtain very early on. We’re on Team Monster. In this case, we’ve been sitting in the audience with the rest of Collinsport. 

It’s a whackadoodle plan involving a Doppelganger created by doubling Barnabas in a mirror -- literally through the looking glass. It’s a nutzo piece of fantasy fluff, but it works because Lara Parker sells it with her trademark, passionate sincerity. That, and… when I hear New Age people who pitch the woo to me, their descriptions of what they do are always vague. When I ask them to break it down, they castigate me for expecting something like a scrying mirror to behave like a household appliance. Jeez. Sah-ree. Somehow, the dreamlike logic of Angelique’s plan makes as much, if not more, sense. It’s like something narrated by my subconscious as I slip into sleep, and has a sense of realism that is undeniably true because it makes a very specific type of credible nonsense. That, and it’s a technique they used on Laura Collins months earlier, giving it verisimilitude without letting us know it’s Chekhov’s Doppelganger. It’s a strangely cruel plan. I’m never confident about the peaceful passing of the staked double, and every time I watch The Prestige, The Great Danton’s cruel sacrifice reminds me of this. No wonder that Barnabas is relatively unphased by things like his upcoming trip to 1796. At this point, he’s been several types of dead… and that’s his least-troublesome set of experiences of late.

This is only in the first half of the episode, mind you. Petofi has had it with hanging around Collinwood. The Old Mill is clammy, it’s fun to be David Selby, and the future awaits. When he gets Delaware-Tate to throw the wands, he gets instant results as to which-way-to-1969. It’s amazing what a competent stooge can accomplish after suffering years bungling incompetents. (Just ask Barnabas after he put Carolyn on the staff.) In an episode where Barnabas experiences the most romantic fulfillment he’s had in three timelines and Angelique describes the most amazing occult caper in Dark Shadows history, leave it to David Selby to walk away with the ending. As Petofi, future bound and claiming that nothing will stop him, Selby brings a maniacally grand sense of emotional oomph that makes the Ring Cycle feel as important as the “Chicken Tonight” jingle. There are moments in drama so, let’s face it, shamelessly overwrought that they cannot be resisted, only embraced. Most mortal actors would have mugged their way through it with shamed insincerity, bellowing to Just Get It Over With. But Selby is a poet with a native sense of integrity and wonder. His loyalty to storytelling is too great and too real, and he nails the unadulterated joy of pure evil with a zestful energy I’ve rarely seen. In that moment, he is a living Marvel Comic book… reason, emotion, and passion completely bound together. 

And to the credit of both Selby and the originator of the role, we somehow don’t feel as if Thayer David is upstaged. On this particular stage, it is a spiritual collaboration of beautiful and perfect unity. These men were as opposite as the Trylon and Persiphere, and in Count Petofi, with the tight poetry of Violet Welles, there is suddenly no difference at all.

This episode was broadcast Oct. 27, 1969.

Dark Shadows: A Halloween Reunion

Original cast members of Dark Shadows are planning an hour-long broadcast live on Hallowe'en, 6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. EST Saturday, Oct. 31.

Lara Parker, David Selby, Nancy Barrett, Marie Wallace, James Storm, Roger Davis, Sharon Smyth, Christopher Pennock and Kathryn Leigh Scott are confirmed for the one-hour broadcast moderated by Ansel Faraj and Jack Fields. You can watch the event live at Youtube channel of The Quarantine Theatre Company HERE. Be there!

Hey, you ... want a free Dark Shadows audio book?

 

Marylin Ross is experiencing a renaissance that almost defies belief. Hermes Press is publishing trade paperback-sized reprints of the author's Dark Shadows novels, while Paperback Classics/Oasis Audio has sequestered Kathryn Leigh Scott in the studio for the better part of the last two years, recording audiobook editions of the series. Oasis also has a number of non-Dark Shadows audiobook gothics from Ross, including such titles as Phantom Manor, Witches Cove and Phantom of the Swamp. There are also Kindle and Audible editions of the Dark Shadows series, as well as an audiobook edition of Dark Shadows: Return to Collinwood (read by Kathryn, Lara Parker, David Selby and Jim Pierson) due out next week. It's a great time to be a sad goth.

Oasis has graciously given me a stack of Marilyn Ross audios to give away. With 28 installments of the series already released (and another coming this week) I figured the obvious place to start is Barnabas Collins and the Mysterious Ghost ... number 13 in the series. 

Why this one? It was possibly my first introduction to Dark Shadows. I found a copy of this title, as well as a great many others, in a used bookstore in Penn, England, around 1980. I even wrote a book report on it! (You can see my art for the report to your right.) If you think a drawing of a fanged vampire lunging for a ghost with a dagger in his hand is a little inappropriate for schoolwork ... well, you haven't seen the piece I drew for the novelization of The Omen that same year. I was a delight to have in class.

I've made previous contests ... challenging. (Remember when I recreated a coloring contest from 1933 as part of a King Kong giveaway?) Let's keep this one easy, though. All you have to do to win CD of  Barnabas Collins and the Mysterious Ghost is to find this story on Facebook (hint hint: it's HERE) and share it. I'll select a winner from the "shares" attached to the post at random.

That's it! I'll announced the winner Monday, Oct. 12. Meanwhile, listen to the Bodice Tipplers podcast talk about the first Barnabas Collins story in the Marilyn Ross series. 

The Dark Shadows Daybook: Oct. 6

Taped on this date in 1970: Episode 1124

By PATRICK McCRAY

Can Barnabas evade the son of the man he murdered before Judah Zachery claims another life? Lamar Trask: Jerry Lacy. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Armed with a letter disclosing the potential true identity of Barnabas Collins, Lamar visits Collinwood to force the brash Englishman’s hand. Meanwhile, at Rose Cottage, a man once possessed by the head of Judah Zachery confronts a haunted Desmond, dying in the process.

Maybe today isn’t the Dark Shadows Daybook. It might be the Trask House Daybook. Because I think we’ve stumbled into another series. 

What a marvelous episode that charges out of the gate, giving us, just in the opening narration, an absolute banquet of intrigue, occult weirdness, and reasons to keep watching. The episode absolutely delivers, with actors like John Karlen and Nancy Barrett still finding new colors in their performances and a script that has genuine intrigue and dread. If you've seen the rest of the series, parts of it may feel familiar. And? Bolero quickly familiarizes us with itself, and that’s the point. It’s a burgeoning experience that intentionally maintains a simplicity that reveals a mounting complexity and grandeur, each go-round surprising us with what it contained all along. Yes, Bolero. But with Donna Wandrey instead of Bo Derek, and that's a pretty good trade. After all, Donna Wandrey never said, “They’re washing me like a horse,” while expecting to be taken seriously in subsequent features. Only Thayer David could pull that off.  

Even though it’s at the start of the much maligned 1840 storyline, this is a solidly rambunctious way to introduce someone to the series. When it begins, Desmond is possessed by a haunted head, Quentin has drawn the Death card in a tarot deck, we find out that Kate Jackson is there to murder Quentin, and Barnabas is doing everything he can to win the current woman of his dreams away from, well, himself. He's always had to live down his nocturnal activities, but this is the most extreme case yet, as he tries to make up for the cad he was just a few days and yet hundreds of years ago. Kind of. Compounded. That's really before any dialogue starts. What a welcome to Collinwood! Considering what people have to wade through in the first episodes of the show just to get to the whole vampire part, this is like pressing the accelerator on a MacLaren. And then you kill off Abe Vigoda. Nothing against Abe, but if it worked for Coppola, it can work for Curtis. Abe, it’s just business. 

However, wedged in between that terrific opening and a climax where supernatural forces victimize Vigoda (and feel free to go back and read that phrase as many times as you want), we are actually stepping into a parallel universe. Well, kind of, and more interestingly than we ever did with parallel time. Because for just a moment, we step into the sister series of Dark Shadows. It’s the series that never got made, but the series that makes all the sense in the world. Its star? Jerry Lacy. 

Is he the villain? Yeah, if you’re a Collins. But that’s a particularly pretzeled moral bar. Take a step back. Get an objective view of the ethical landscape that mercifully vanishes at Widow’s Hill.  We take a degree of heroism for granted on the show because vampires are cool and we like Jonathan Frid. It’s easy to forget that these are pretty reprehensible people. Is there an alternative? Maybe for a blip in 1840: The House of Trask. For a period, they are the other white meat of prominent Collinsport families. Yes, they are working class, and yes they haven't been there as long, and no, they don't stay as long, but they nevertheless have a place. And you could very easily make a multi-generational supernatural tv series just based on that dynasty. 

One of the things that brings this into focus on this is the stunning performance of Jerry Lacy, an actor so good that we take him for granted. It can be a curse of good actors because they make it look so effortless. In 1124, Lacy could easily win a bet on who the dashing and dark romantic lead really is. He is just as intense, unpredictable, and determined as any vampire. And perhaps as commandingly seductive. When he is alone with the women in the episode, he summons up a surprisingly deep well of passionate intensity. Yes, judgmental, but not without a powerful sense of desire. As he draws Letitia Faye into using her psychic abilities for his own ends, he shows a new and powerful side to the Trask archetype. For once, nothing is forbidden to him by the cloth. Poor Barnabas only comes back into the drawing room to save his own keister, seconds from being outed. With Lacy in brief control of the drama, Jonathan Frid plays the weasel pedal to an extent that even outshines the best of John Karlen. As hard as he possibly can. It's a delight, and he continues when he gets back home. Like a cartoon character, Trask has let himself in there, also, and is so calm and collected, I am surprised he’s not smoking Barnabas’ pipe and correcting his crossword puzzle. 

Briefly, Trask the hero of a different show who has somehow wandered into a program where the victors of history have written him and his family as the bad guys. His father was a badass witch hunter, reportedly tortured and starved to death when he dared to pursue the servants, lovers, and associates of a vengeful and aristocratic vampire. He never knew the old man, but he certainly knows of his legend and suffered his absence. Fascinated with the strange dance of life and death, unable to afford medical school, Lamar Trask has clearly studied voraciously.  He’s well-versed in the law, of course. An historic trial cost his father his future. Even in 1840, the only way to learn about bodies and anatomy, short of becoming a music hall entertainer, was to become a mortician. Makes you think. Maybe he didn’t get into that line because he's creepy. He might have followed that pursuit for entirely logical reasons. The Collins family is a menace! Look at the Collinses that he has to deal with. There's Gabriel, who is not exactly the life of the party. Then you have Quentin and Desmond, who have the incredibly poor judgment to do things like build unguarded, unstable time portals, become best friends with Gerard Stiles, and consider the severed head of a nefarious occultist to be a great gift for mom. 

The whole town loses either way, there. If you think it’s the perfect gift, you’re a danger to the entire town. If Flora is so nutty that it IS the perfect gift, you’re a danger to the entire Western Hemisphere. As a warmup. Yeah, these are the normative characters. These are the people we are supposed to trust. Topping it, Trask has a letter from his father absolutely outing what went on shortly before his mysterious death, doing so with eerie specificity. And who shows up? The “identical son" of his father 's killer, wielding ungodly social power and wealth. A man who potentially. has the powers of hell at his fingertips. And he’s suddenly on a first-name basis with your former Lois Lane. 

Bolero again. But not just ascending. By this point, it’s inverting and twisting like trapeze artist determined to see how far their bravery and recklessness can take their art. In 1840, the show is still in midair, and maybe that’s where it remained. Of course, the eventual fact that Lamar is a ruthless and unethical bigot has to crash the party, taking Dark Shadows back to reality, which is not only where it belongs, but what it defines. 

This episode was broadcast Oct. 15, 1970.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: Oct. 2

By PATRICK McCRAY

Professor Stokes stops at nothing to prove that Eve is French. But will she say oui? Eve: Marie Wallace. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Stokes warns Adam that Eve is up to no good, but to no avail. Just when he thinks he has the situation clarified, the body of Leona goes missing, as do Adam and Eve. But Stokes hints that he knows where they are.

Leave it to Universal to sell posters over movies. There are some great and Great films in their canon, but… are there? I’m speaking about the Monsters, here. There are marvelous elements in those movies, yes, but did you really think they combined them successfully when you first watched them? For me, only three truly grabbed me on my first viewings: The Black Cat; Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein; and The Bride of Frankenstein. But the Frankenfilms aren’t perfect. Let’s face it, other than breaking a green sweat making threats and being professionally misunderstood, the Creature has little to do. His wife, even less. As far as being the title character of the Greatest Horror Movie Ever Made, she flies pretty casual, showing up to the plot just in time for a nightcap. She doesn’t appear until the final minute or two of the movie, has no dialogue, bitterly dislikes our hero, and then gets blowed up real good. 

It’s a shaggy dog story, perhaps intentionally. As a gay man of the 1930’s, James Whale led a life necessarily fraught with as much frustration as fulfillment. I mean, look at his movies and don’t take too long coughing up a verdict. It’s no surprise that the creature waits for almost all of the film, only to find himself loathed by the girl he’s been waiting for, despite her being all that glitters. Or crackles, in this case. That kind of frustrated anticipation and crestfallen hope was probably intrinsic to Whale’s life. He sums it up with Bride and moves on.

It puts the Dark Shadows writers in a marvelous position. So far -- of the major ‘horror’ works -- they’ve tackled Dracula and Frankenstein, improving vastly on both. But here, there is nothing to improve… just explore. They pick up on Whale’s thesis of frustrated desire and push it to a place much, much darker than I think is obvious. Eve doesn’t just dislike Adam. As the vessel for the wickedest woman in history, she finds him to be a big green bouncy house for psychological sadism.  But I think that’s the safest move the show makes. Let’s remove the Marie Roget element. Here’s yer gender statement, pal. When a man is born, he’s a gibbering id, delighted by shiny things and buttons. He’s easily taken in by mustachioed sorcerers and Thayer David. Mistrustful of genteel Canadians. 

When a woman is born? You got, um, you got Eve. Hey, don’t take it out on me. Tell it to Sam Hall. Yes, these are all stereotypes, but for whom? It’s misogyny for a female audience, seeing not themselves but the kind of women they can’t stand. I wonder if this is the portrayal they would have created for a largely male audience? But it wasn’t, and the show, to be seen accurately, must be viewed through that lens.  Yet, for modern eyes, Eve’s confidence and sense of purpose are as admirable as they are questionable. It makes her the show’s least predictable character. The shame of it is that it takes a possession to create that kind of volition, but without it, she’d simply be a ginger haired Angelique.

And maybe the ultimate problem is that she’s an Angelique without a purpose. They try. They really try. The real shame of Eve is that, by shoehorning in the Marie Roget element, they rob the character of discovering her sense of purpose. But Roget is so ancient and so French she lacks a context in 1968 Collinsport, despite her obsession with characters played by Roger Davis. Barnabas, Stokes, and Julia, the venerable old bachelors on the show, try to break it to Adam without devolving into a drumming circle, but he’s determined to be led on an emotional snipe hunt anyway. Of course he’ll stand up for the honor of the character least worthy of it. It’s another reflection of cosmic truth that makes Dark Shadows the best documentary on TV. Equally truthful is Eve’s comically counterfeit lament that, as a woman, it’s her lot to suffer. You know, as she holds everyone in fear and suspense. The moment is played as broadly as it’s written, but there’s an ugly, satiric truth to it. Eve is the one character on the show so feminine, she’s practically a drag queen brought to life by the hand of Waylon Flowers. There’s no denying she’s a woman, but hardly helpless. 

Ultimately, she grabs the Adam story, notorious for going nowhere, and takes it everywhere at once. It’s an exhausting prospect, and a sneak preview of where the show would go -- for better and worse -- for the next two and a half years. Marie Wallace is the ideal person to inaugurate the trip. The visual depiction is so straightforward that it shouldn’t work. Black dress and hose. Same thing Thayer David wore to the set. But it’s her presence that is so unforgettable. Wallace relishes the joy of acting, and a successful Dark Shadows villain needn’t be saddled with a causal plan. Just the kind of joy for living that only actors and supervillains can appreciate. 

Diabolos bless them, one and all.