Dark Shadows, The 1973 Tapes: Carriage of the Damned

By JUSTIN PARTRIDGE

Oh, yes the SPOILERS AHEAD Wagon is a’commmmin down the way, oh, please let it beeeee for meeeeeee!

“Why is it that the ones obsessed with preventing death are always the ones causing it?”

Necromancy and taut emotional drama collide in the busy, but entertaining Carriage of the Damned! Yes, that brings us to the end of the line here at the CHS for this round of coverage and now I can actually and fittingly use that analogy since this story is about a train! I know I said last time that it was a bus, but you all should know by now that I like to be silly. My nickname around here is “Clifford” thanks to my boyish wit and mischievous nature. My finale induced nervous vamping aside, Carriage of the Damned is a fine finale to this latest round of my audio coverage. One that switches focus to the other Jennings sibling with tragic ease, ending this arc on a soberly affecting note.

The Jennings family is mourning a fresh loss in the wake of Simon Turner’s death during The Happier Dead. While Amy is sort of coasting through life around Collinwood, Sabrina is onto something big. Like, the cure for the werewolf curse big and that leads her to the grave of one Gerard Stiles, one time meat puppet of the magus Judah Zachary. I have to admit, when this started, I was very, very worried that this plot was going to be a bit Inside Baseball for me. Mainly because, while I know a fair amount about Amy, I am not so well versed on the canon surrounding Sabrina. I knew that she was cursed and the genesis of said curse was pretty tragic, but Stiles and Zachary were new elements to me and I worried they might derail my hyperactive Millennial mind.

But, thankfully, Alan Flanagan’s tightly contained script prepares for all of that and in the lead up to getting to the story’s main setting, an abandoned train car, it neatly lays out the connection Sabrina has with Stiles and Zachary as a legit magickal presence in the universe so that was much appreciated. And the plot itself really makes the most of its pulpy, slightly ghoulish premise and takes it to an unexpectedly emotion conclusion. After discovering the corpse, who Sabrina had planned to resurrect in order for the meatsuited Magus to tell her the secret of curing lycanthropy, is headless, the Jenning sisters perform a locating spell and see that the head is...moving. Specifically onto a train heading out of town. Naturally Sabrina gives chase and links up with a whole cast of characters who are slowly being possessed by...a head...in like a hat box. It is absolutely bonkers.

But like all the best Dark Shadows offerings, the whole thing is played DEADLY straight, thanks to David Darlington and Darren Gross’ theatrical, consistently engaging direction and the stellar cast of often underappreciated Dark Shadows staples. I have kind of groused before in this column of this arc playing it safe in terms of settings and scope, but Carriage is a great example of the directors and script making a small location work for them. The sound design really makes a meal of the mobile setting and the chatty, gory centerpiece of Stiles’ severed head, jazzing up the single space beyond well mixed train EFX and ambient music. Lisa Richards shines thoroughly as Sabrina, our leading lady. Though we only get a few glimpses of a rich dynamic between her and Stephanie Ellyne, it is represented enough to know that Richards is capable of it which is really great stacked up against her as a solo lead in the rest of the story. She does, however, share a ton of scene time with one Kathleen Cody, who plays Professor Stokes’ niece Hallie, and the pair truly impress as foils for one another, both coveting the head for differing, understandable reasons.

And again, all of this is played deadly, painfully straight and that is where I think Carriage of the Damned really succeeds. While, yeah, the whole thing boils down to a severed head trying to possess people on TOP of a lady wanting to ask the head about how to not be a werewolf anymore (Dark Shadows, everybody!), Flanagan’s script goes to some very real, very emotional places with the premise. For example, while Sabrina’s motivation is a cure, Hallie’s is revenge. Based around the fact that she REMEMBERS being killed by Stiles in a Parallel Time and it is slowly driving her insane. I am kind of a sucker for that narrative trope and Dark Shadows is the PERFECT property to pull that stuff in! Plus, Flanagan goes a step further by really showing the cost of being cursed and how that would realistically affect a family, leading to Amy to famously proclaim that she would “Never return to Collinsport” right before the final theme strikes up.

I will admit this is one hell of a dark note to end a column on, but Carriage of the Damned was a tremendously grounded final offering from 1973 and one that I feel that clears the stage well for whatever is next for Collinsport and the many players that we all know and love. If anything it tells me that I and this range needs a lot more Lisa Richards, but I am more than happy with her sending out this arc on a down, but satisfying note.

And that is going to do it for me and this dusty box of wonderful and weird tapes filled with stories about this town we all are kind of unhealthily obsessed with. I hope you have enjoyed reading these half as much as i’ve had listening to these stories and recording my ramblings about them. If you have any other suggestions of what I should cover next or just random stand out stories I should be made aware of, please feel free to holler at me via twitter or e-mail, you’ll find both addresses below. I have the next column set, which is a doozy, but I am always on the lookout for more Content™.

Until next time, dear readers, be seeing you.


The complete 1973 saga:

---

Justin Partridge has always loved monsters and he thinks that explains a lot about him. When he isn’t over analyzing comics at Newsarama or ranting about Tom Clancy over at Rogues Portal, he is building Call of Cthulhu games, spreading the good word of Anti-Life, or rewatching Garth Marenghi's Darkplace for the dozenth time. He can be reached at the gasping Lovecraftian void that is Twitter @j_partridgeIII or via e-mail at justin@betweenthepanels.com Odds are he will want to talk about Hellblazer.

Dark Shadows, The 1973 Tapes: The Happier Dead

By JUSTIN PARTRIDGE

The SPOILERS AHEAD are coming for you, Barbara! 

“These patients aren’t alive, Amy, they’re just...NOT DEAD!”

Hello and welcome back to The 1973 Tapes! How are you? Are you eating enough? Drinking enough water? You know, we worry about you. This is our penultimate entry into this column and today we are discussing 2014’s The Happier Dead! This might be the penultimate entry into the 1973 arc, but it is the SECOND part of the “Amy Jennings, Supernatural Avenger” canon that I totally in no way just made up. One of the great joys of listening to these audios has been the way that Amy Jennings has flourished as a character for me and I think The Happier Dead might just be the purest example of why she works in this universe and how much Stephanie Ellyne brings to the role behind the mic. Though I have to say this one wasn’t nearly as scary as y’all said it was, The Happier Dead was still a fine showcase of Ellyne’s talents and of Amy Jennings’ tragically powerful past.

One of the neater things about coming to these audios fairly blinds were the backstories that were hinted at throughout Bloodlust. And nobody seemed to have a richer backstory than Amy Jennings, who apparently had, as the kids say, been through it. A supernatural college career, a doomed romance, and more importantly, an actual life outside of Collinsport. We all know how all that turned out (and if not, take a gander at the Bloodlust Diaries, right here at The Collinsport Historical Society! Fuck yeah, integrated branding!), but thankfully, The 1973 Tapes have allowed me to finally experience a lot of that backstory and it has just made me love Amy all the more.

But while the first part of my “Supernatural Avenger” duology, The Lucifer Gambit, was basically just an episode of Supernatural with a higher production value, The Happier Dead felt much more substantial from the jump. In the middle of studying with her college beau, one Simon Turner, more on him in a bit, Amy is struck with stabbing pains in her side, the pain being so great it renders her unconcious. When she awakes, she finds that Simon has driven her back to Collinsport from Salem, a whopping three hour drive, in order to check her into the Collinsport Hospital. Amy, naturally, is horrified, but things take a sharp turn into weird when the pair discovery that nobody is dying there anymore. Instead, they are LIVING, some even rising from the dead, somehow “surviving” massive injuries in a short of limbo between living and dying.

As I was told that this one was super duper scary, I steeled myself for shocks, but to be quite honest, they never came. Sure the noises the victims made were truly haunting and the physical implications of the spell, which Amy voices throughout thanks to Adam Usden’s pointed scripting, are quite unpleasant to think about. But it didn’t really ever reach Beyond the Grave level spookiness for me and I have to admit it was kind of a let down. That isn’t to say that this one is bad or skippable by any stretch it is just...a special kind of frustrating to be told that a story is ultra scary only to find out that it isn’t.

What this story doesn’t have in terms of horror, it more than makes up for with tragedy, which is something I did expect after hearing the name “Simon Turner”. Yes, this story finally gave me the straight dope on his and Amy’s relationship and as I suspected, it weren’t great. At first though I have to say, I wasn’t really impressed with Simon. John Chancer certainly plays him with aplomb and he and Ellyne have a natural chemistry that the script makes good use of, but the character himself is kind of a lunk and seems like a real drag on Amy as she tries to suss out the mystery of the hospital even with fresh stitches.

However as this thing went on and the resolution barreled toward me, I was absolutely floored at the outcome and the heavy emotions the ending deployed. Of course the whole thing is centered around some madman trying to achieve immortality, but the way Usden brings it home is such a brilliant gut punch. One that haunts Amy still to this day and one that will probably stick with me for a long time coming. There was something so shockingly human about Simon’s sacrifice and the way he died for love; a recurring theme in Dark Shadows but one that hasn’t lost one ounce of power. Amy Jennings returned to Collinsport a different person and now after listening to The Happier Dead, I now know the full cost of that change and it has only made her a richer, fuller character to me as a result.

Horror and tragedy often goes hand in hand in the Dark Shadows universe and The Happier Dead brings that sensibility to the Big Finishverse in a big damn way. Amy might have been an early favorite of mine as a listener, but now, after this story, I finally feel like I have the full breadth of her character and of Ellyne’s full scope of performance. It may not have been super scary, but The Happier Dead was still a very important, and very satisfying entry.

NEXT TIME! The Finale! Carriage of the Damned! Sabrina Jennings vs…*checks notes* a bus? I think? This is going to be fun. Interesting stuff is in the hopper for y’all in 2019 after this wraps up. I hope you are ready. Until then, be seeing you.

The complete 1973 saga:

---

Justin Partridge has always loved monsters and he thinks that explains a lot about him. When he isn’t over analyzing comics at Newsarama or ranting about Tom Clancy over at Rogues Portal, he is building Call of Cthulhu games, spreading the good word of Anti-Life, or rewatching Garth Marenghi's Darkplace for the dozenth time. He can be reached at the gasping Lovecraftian void that is Twitter @j_partridgeIII or via e-mail at justin@betweenthepanels.com Odds are he will want to talk about Hellblazer.

Dark Shadows, The 1973 Tapes: The Harvest of Souls

By JUSTIN PARTRIDGE

Caution, Sailor. Here Be SPOILERS AHEAD.

“My name is Maggie Evans, and this is the end of my story…”

1973 goes Full Lovecraftian in the wooly, but entertaining The Harvest of Souls. Given novelty by the return of not one, but TWO major Dark Shadows baddies, but given heart by the wonderful leads of the story, this story exploring the aftermath of Beyond the Grave and the toll it has taken on Collinsport is a raw, introspective tale that relies more on emotions than shocks. After the blood curdling scares of the previous audio, it couldn’t have come at a better time if i’m being totally honest. Though the plot is a touch dense and gets a bit widdly toward the end, The Harvest of Souls is a wonderful resetting story for the arc, for the shellshocked town of Collinsport, and her citizens.

Collinsport is basically in ruins after the events of Beyond the Grave. Houses lie abandoned. Shops are still smashed up from the rioting. And the papers and the BBC are chalking it up to a “gas leak”. Because of course they are. But nobody is taking the aftermath harder than Maggie Evans, who we open on in the blackest of moods, chasing her antidepressants with liquor. It is hard stuff to listen to for sure, but James Goss’ empathetic and heartfelt script never plays this stuff as exploitive. There is a real empathy running throughout this story that I much appreciated and that starts and end with James Goss.

Of course it also doesn’t hurt that he and directors David Darlington and Darren Gross are working with two of the finest actors in this range, Kathryn Leigh Scott and Colin Baker. Yes, Gerald Conway...excuse me, NICHOLAS BLAIR makes his grand return to the franchise in the dead, but possessed body of Gerald, saving Maggie from her suicidal depression by...chucking her in the sea. It is a harrowing scene to open up the story with, but like I said, it is staged, written, and played beautifully by all involved.

And it only gets better from there as Maggie is drawn into vast magic weaved by a diabolical team up between Blair and The Leviathans! Gladdening my Shoggoth loving heart! “I can’t even KILL myself without some MONSTER butting in!” Maggie grouses in one of the story’s best lines. And where is the lie? Because while Collinsport was burning, Nicholas was striking a deal with the Leviathans from Seaview, aiming to clear the town of it’s human infestation for the Leviathans to rise again while the human populace of the town live “forever” in a dream state in wyrewood box, carved from the wood of Collinwood’s staircase, which apparently was ITSELF carved from “the first tree” of the Leviathans from a universe where they had ruled for thousands of years?

Like I said, this thing gets a bit...dense at the end, and I had some trouble following the whole “plan” once Blair started to walk Maggie through it all. I am big enough to admit that. BUT, my being a rube aside, the performances and interplay between Baker and Scott is really just wonderful and elevates this story from “fun diversion” to “essential listening”, ESPECIALLY for Maggie fans. Baker and Scott lean into the character’s history with one another and use that to inform their performances and interactions throughout, giving this whole story, even at its most insane (and trust me it does get insane), a real air of realism, at least on the emotional level.

I am sure there are those out there that will bemoan Colin Baker’s exit from the range, but I am pleased enough with his time in Collinsport. To allow him to stay around as Blair’s new avatar would really spoil the last minute turn to grace the character has AND would have had an ultra powerful loose end plot wise running around the town in future stories. Plus the man has Doctor Who stuff to do! What’s he gonna do, NOT be the Sixth Doctor in fantastic stories like Order of the Daleks or ...Ish?!  C’mon man, we know better than that.

I also have to point out the fantastic decision to make Maggie’s relationship with the late great Sheriff Hardy (played with affability through the ages by Jonathon Marx) another emotional focal point of the episode, but NOT in an expressly romantic way! I know Maggie Evans is often kind of pigeonholed into the role of female romantic lead but thankfully The Harvest of Souls neatly side steps that, establishing how Jim had basically been a presence in Maggie’s life for as long as WE have known her and their connection ran much deeper than just mere romance. It was a really mature direction for the story to take and I’m glad they did it. It made this one feel a lot more real than most even with actual Shoggoth like creatures showing up.

All in all, I was very impressed with The Harvest of Souls. It was exactly what I needed after having my sanity shattered by the previous adventure. Graced with tremendous performances backed by a stellar script and production values, The Harvest of Souls is a downshift in scares for sure, but a real winner all the same thanks to the story’s heart and emotion. When I look back on this arc I have a feeling I will thinking of this one pretty fondly. When Collinsport was pushed to the brink, love won the day. That is the kind of stuff I will always respond to.

NEXT TIME! The Happier Dead! The penultimate column of the 1973 Tapes! Are you as excited as I am?! Probably not! But that’s okay. Until then, be seeing you.

The complete 1973 saga:

---

Justin Partridge has always loved monsters and he thinks that explains a lot about him. When he isn’t over analyzing comics at Newsarama or ranting about Tom Clancy over at Rogues Portal, he is building Call of Cthulhu games, spreading the good word of Anti-Life, or rewatching Garth Marenghi's Darkplace for the dozenth time. He can be reached at the gasping Lovecraftian void that is Twitter @j_partridgeIII or via e-mail at justin@betweenthepanels.com Odds are he will want to talk about Hellblazer.

Dark Shadows, The 1973 Tapes: Beyond the Grave

By JUSTIN PARTRIDGE

You Are Entering a Dimension of Sight, Sound, and Spoilers Ahead.

“Good luck, Mrs. Ripperton. You’ll need it.”

Despite the quirky insulation of the Big Finish fandom, there was a certain amount of hype surrounding some stories. As the Society’s new Audio Correspondent, it was hard not to get swept up in some of it before listening. Bloodlust was one for example. People had said how amazing it was and it made good on it. The incoming The Happier Dead is another. I have been told by fans (more than likely someone on Twitter) that it is one of the scariest audios out there and I have to say, I think about that a lot as it looms. BUT one always, always, always was touted above all of the others. And that story is the subject of today’s column, Beyond the Grave! The culmination of the range’s stab at serialization, this story is wonderful shake up of the range’s formats so far, making this much more of a conceptual piece than an actor’s showcase. Since the start of this arc Beyond The Grave has been a creeping presence in the background and now we get one hell of a payoff in this stunning “lost TV special”.

Found Footage as a subgenre is kind of hit or miss. We, as horror fans can pretty much all agree on that and we can’t agree on much ever, right? But Beyond the Grave kind of does the impossible and translates the tropes and conventions of the subgenre brilliantly into audio. Scripted by Aaron Lamont and masterfully directed by David Darlington, Darren Gross, and Jim Pierson, the former providing a wonderful remix of the show’s iconic theme with a gloomy television theme tune, this story establishes it’s rules and narrative confines early on and then promptly starts using them to scare the absolute shit out of you. And it bloody well does! More than once as I listened, I had to take out one of my earbuds and regain my bearings in my office because I was good and spooked out. All thanks to this thing’s steady, skin-crawling build and dynamite direction and sound design.



TV presenter Tom Lacey, played with an affable charm by Stephen Kelly, has been snooping through the background of Collinsport here lately and now we know why. A live TV special on Halloween night exploring the weird history of Collinsport, in particular the dark legend of “Mad Jack”, a spirit that reportedly haunts Eagle Hill Cemetery. The plan was for Tom to play host in Maine while the luminous and steely Kate Ripperton (the welcome return of Asta Parry to my audio coverage) quarterbacks from the studio back in England, taking calls from viewers. But things went wrong. Oh, so horribly wrong and the result is one of the best audios the Big Finish Dark Shadows range has ever produced.

But Beyond the Grave really succeeds not only as a horror story, because woof, it really does, but as a culmination of this arc’s move toward more ambitious, serialized stories. This whole arc has had somewhat of a loose structure and Beyond the Grave was the web that was starting to weave through that structure with each script at least mentioning or establishing some sort of connection to Tom and the show, promising a payoff down the line. Though it isn’t expressly connected to any one story from the arc, as the concept of it give it a certain narratively air-gapped feel away from the overarching plot threads, it feels like a neatly novel way to have your cake and eat it too when it comes to a resolution to all those hints and shoutouts in earlier episodes.

And seriously, everyone, I just can. Not. stress. enough. just how goddamn scary this one is. I think of myself as someone who can handle this genre fairly well and I have, to be honest, for quite some time. But this thing truly made my skin crawl and it did so with the littlest things pretty early. One fantastic example is the way a certain gag is mixed into tracks of the story. Early on in the “broadcast”, in between some banter from Tom and Kate, what sounds like a scream pierces through the audio. When I first heard it, my blood ran cold. It was like I was back in high school having just found a website talking about the creepy vocal track of “Love Rollercoaster” and I was turning white. But then the script doubles down on it, having a few bewildered callers call Kate and COMPLAIN. And it only gets scarier from there! I’m talking rage killings, a live on air possession, and more creepy sound effects and modulations than you or I would even know what to do with! Think you’ve got nerves of steel? Then listen to Beyond the Grave in darkened office in ill-fitting earbuds if you think you got the SAND! I sure as hell didn’t! I finished it huddled around a lamp after turning half the lights in the building on.

Hype is often a dangerous thing but I can safely say Beyond the Grave lives up to its reputation and I have the goosebumps to prove it. Immaculately directed, mixed, and scored by a trio of talented technicians and graced with a slow, horrifying burn of a script brought to life by a troupe of gamely talented actors this audio thriller is the best of what the range and the franchise has to offer. In all of it’s chilling glory. Just don’t listen to it without the lights on.

NEXT TIME! The Harvest of Souls by James Goss! Maggie Evans NO MORE and The Return of Gerald Conway! Until then, be seeing you.     

The complete 1973 saga:

---

Justin Partridge has always loved monsters and he thinks that explains a lot about him. When he isn’t over analyzing comics at Newsarama or ranting about Tom Clancy over at Rogues Portal, he is building Call of Cthulhu games, spreading the good word of Anti-Life, or rewatching Garth Marenghi's Darkplace for the dozenth time. He can be reached at the gasping Lovecraftian void that is Twitter @j_partridgeIII or via e-mail at justin@betweenthepanels.com Odds are he will want to talk about Hellblazer.

Dan Curtis talks about his waning love affair with vampires, 1973 newspaper interview

From the May 26, 1973, issue of The Palm Beach Post. Don't ask me why the word "actor" is in the headline.