The Dark Shadows Daybook: April 13

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this day in 1970: Episode 996

What has black hair, a bushy mustache, and swings a mean sword cane? Parallel Time, meet your new best friend. John Yaeger: Chris Pennock. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Cyrus transforms into the giddy, roughhousing swinger, John Yaeger, who immediately goes to the Eagle to romance Buffie. In the process, he deals with his romantic rival, Steve, with extreme prejudice. When he offers to pay for the damage with one of Longworth’s checks, Buffie drops a dime on him to Quentin. Yaeger is well aware of the betrayal, however.

April 13 is a significant day for me because it’s not only the day they taped episode 210, where the iconic hand of Barnabas Collins shot up to grab the 20th century by the throat, it was also one year before I was born. But by that time, 1971, Dark Shadows had been off the air for eleven days.

I was eleven when I saw Dark Shadows for the first time. That was in January of 1982. It was very much of a different world from 1967 or 1970, betrayed by hairstyles and hemlines, and yet, as adults are cursed to do, I will tell you what you may know better than I; eleven years is nothing.  The show had only been off the air for eleven years. Eleven years ago from tonight, Barack Obama was president. We had iPhones. Marvel movies were coming out… one, anyway. Daniel Craig was still James Bond. It doesn’t seem that long ago. And 996 features a performance and an interpretation of a classic character that are both shockingly modern. Ahead of 1970. Of 1982. And maybe of 2020.

April 13. I can think of few better ways to spend this day than with Chris Pennock. With episode 996, we do. And how.

It’s the first time we see John Yaeger flex his muscles in the fullest sense. From the get-go, although the makeup is more Goulet than ghoul, this is no ordinary performance. How much was Joe Caldwell? How much was Chris Pennock? Inseparable?

Dark Shadows has a rich history of improving the classics, thank you very much, as they reinterpreted venerable texts for a postmodern era. The original authors -- Shelley, Stoker, Wilde, James, Stevenson, etc -- certainly had the edges and luxuries of poetic language and originality. But with the edge of originality also comes the myopia of having to do this now-now-now, with no time to let decades and culture mull over the ideas in context. Essentially, those original authors were beta testing their ideas. The James Whales, Jimmy Sangsters, and Dan Curtises (Curti?) were perfecting them for wide release to the public.

Good. Evil. So clear for Victorians and Edwardians whose sun never sat, whose racial superiority was axiomatic, and who didn’t have the troubled teendom that was the 20th century yet under their belts. The Jekyll and Hyde concept is now, post-Freud & Company, just… weird. Richard Matheson fired the first shot with The Enemy Within, wherein both the “good” and “evil” sides had as much to recommend them as to condemn. Pennock and Caldwell take this even further, giving Dark Shadows its most philosophical (and dramatically ebullient) moment, sadly stuck in a storyline that is, you know, babysitting the audience because we got a movie to make, people. Look alive!

Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe they couldn’t have gotten away with this if Uncle Dan were at home. (Or if Drug Culture had not yet been totally villainized, and someone tell Cary Grant to give us his source.) When we meet John Yaeger, he might not be what we think of as conventionally attractive, but he’s also not the semi-simian grotesque that March, Cagney, and the other guys became. The early Hydes were childlike. Yaeger is a cocky young man in full. You know when women tell you (well, tell me) not to be too nice, what they’re really saying is not to be too reliant on their validation. John Yaeger is an army of self-validation. No self-doubt. It’s not that the opinions of others don’t matter, but they don’t seem to matter more to him than his own.

Okay, yes, he beats Steve mercilessly, but Steve is no prize and his grabby way with the biscuit hooks, re: Elizabeth Eis, would not exactly fly in under the flag of #MeToo Uber Alles. This is redneck-on-redneck action, and I say let the boys duke it out, which is actually my way of saying that Yaeger was not unprovoked. When he comes to life, it is with as much joy as malice. He is the continuum of human reaction, and say what you will, he’s honest. As I’ve noted before, it’s hard to tell what Yaeger would be like if things went his way. I imagine a pretty fun guy. Similarly, if he sensed true loyalty, he’d probably be the kind of dogged advocate everyone wants in a friend.

The problem with Yaeger is not that he’s too much of anything. The problem is that everyone else is too little. If everyone took a dose of Longworth No.5, he’d be on a level playing field. I’m not so sure he’d go nuts at that point because, well, as Robert Heinlein imagined, (in some cases) an armed society is a polite society. Until then, while there are few actions of his that we can reasonably commend, we can still get a giggle or more from the spirit. As for the execution? Again, perhaps this is only a performance that you can get away with when the boss is in Tarrytown. If there’s anyone whose emphatic sense of conflict relations might meet its match with John Yaeger, it’s Dan Curtis. Am I the only one who sees this?

This episode hit the airwaves on April 20, 1970.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: April 13

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1967: Episode 210

Willie’s scheme to rob the Collins family of its wealth may cost him far more than riches when the dead rise to take vengeance. Timothy Gordon: Barnabas Collins. (Repeat; 30 min.)

As Liz pays off Jason to leave Collinwood, Willie escapes the house to plunder the Collins mausoleum. As he cracks open a sarcophagus behind a hidden door, a hand from within the tomb grasps him by his throat. 

This is the first episode that most of us in the pre-streaming generation ever saw. It may not have been the first Dark Shadows episode, but in every way that matters, it's the first episode of Dark Shadows.

We generally avoid thinking of it as the pilot of the series, because, let's face it, it isn't. To the delight of literalists and pedants everywhere, the first episode is cleverly entitled, “Episode 1.” (And my favorite part is where Burke Devlin has to talk David into the pod race so that he can get a sample of his blood.) But 210 is the first that matters. Yeah, I said it. And I’m not just being a weisenheimer. If you start with today’s episode, are you really missing much? Clearly not. We didn’t see those early episodes for decades, and it didn’t slow us down at all. More than most other shows, Dark Shadows is true theater. It deals with consequences rather than causes. That means that there is always some kind of past we didn’t see. There are always, even for completists, “unaired episodes” being referred to. Victoria’s Sanka is barely in the cup before she finds herself over a decade behind, if dealing with Burke and Roger, or twice that time if dealing with Liz, Carolyn, and the case of the slightly bent fireplace poker. We’ve always missed something on the show. Isn’t that the very core of the haunted house mythos? Protagonists in stories like that only exist because of what they don't know. Because of the threats they're trying to solve…  threats that came from someplace else. Usually wrapping them up in problems they weren't even alive to help create.

The Dark Shadows that begins with this episode was a success to the extent that, 55 years later, you're reading about it and I'm writing about it.  So it stands to reason that this episode contributed to that success in a unique way because it started it. Most people might look at episode 210 and conclude that it works because of its last five seconds. While you would think it's appropriate to give the hand a hand, it works as a pilot in other regards. In more important regards. Barnabas is hardly the first vampire we see in the episode. In fact, all of the men in the episode are vampires to one extent or another. Jason is exploiting Liz. Willie is exploiting Jason and attempting to exploit the Collins Legacy. And while the women are largely victimized by this, I'm not sure that you can call them victims. They certainly don't act like it. Liz legitimately thinks that she is ending the situation, and she comes off as a matriarch who seems very good at ending situations she wants to see buried in a sea chest in the cellar. Which is probably why Roger had gas logs installed in the fireplace. Still, Liz clearly has secrets, and Jason knows them to the extent that he’s calling way too many shots for a man with a hat like that. 

Villains and heroes are immediately evident. Liz is dancing for Jason like his name’s Bob Fosse, and that immediately roots us in a world where aristocracy is a ramshackle lie. But Jason also seems under the thumb of his own underling’s unpredictability. He’s the one pleading to Willie to come clean about his secret plans, and Willie taunts Jason with his ignorance of them. Jason’s sole power, we quickly see, is in Knowing Things, so this stymies our would-be heavy to a point where he seems downright human. Perhaps more so than the austere Liz. Certainly more so than the vaguely sanctimonious Victoria. These may be the forces of good, but evil seems more compelling and strangely identifiable. Because evil is just as powerless as we are in the face of a raw stupidity that is too dim to see the limits of its own great ideas. Hence, we see Willie’s ability to keep everyone subordinate… even more than the show’s blackmailing mastermind or the bedrock of Old Money American Power. 

Even before the long pantomime of Solving the Puzzle of the Mausoleum, we are treated to a compelling story about the collapse of American power and the strange charm of moral corruption via Jason’s Irish lilt. But it’s more than that. All of these people in the power chain have fooled themselves into thinking they are the top dogs while being knowingly undermined by the guys right underneath. That’s the paranoia that defines the American identity. Live by the redneck, die by the redneck. The only one who didn’t get the memo is Willie, whose clues to the family jewels are the ultimate wardrobe of Emperor’s New Clothes. They will only lead him to death, which is all that’s below him on the ladder down from the Olympus of Collinwood. 

Sure, Willie. You go exploit the rich. Spend it fast, baby. What you don’t know is that death has a lot of plans for you. And we love the ending because we all know what it’s like to be taken advantage of. Maybe this episode of Dark Shadows is strongest as a standalone, ending in a profoundly Rod Serling-esque place. Seeing it end like this is to see that at least one person isn’t playing the game. Barnabas has no moral inversion because a dead man has no need for moral order at all. It’s a relief that the cold and misanthropic universe -- the one that gives cancer to infants -- will also turn the relentless cruelty of its inevitability toward even the worst. The Willies of the world may think they have it by the ass, but death truly does come for us all.

It’s just that in 210, we can finally shake death’s hand. You know, after it chokes the life out of He Who Thought He Could Get Away With It. The painting of Barnabas serves as a warning of this, but no one is paying attention.

People in the house see the regalia on Barnabas and talk about how he liked to wear jewelry. But that’s not jewelry. He’s bedecked in the honors of war. These are the medals of a soldier. A decorated one. Barnabas Collins represents the strength that built Collinwood. A strength whose apparent absence allows a grubby second-hander like Jason to victimize Liz, and for Willie to keep Jason equally off-balance. 

Only, it’s a strength that is not absent. Just patient. It is a strength so undeniably resilient that even death is powerless to stop it. 

Through it, in a fashion, Liz has her revenge. Willie is trapped by the literally unthinkable, and we know that it’s only a matter of time until Jason is, as well. 

Perhaps we didn’t tune in to episode 211 to see if Willie survived. Perhaps we tuned in to make sure that he didn’t. 

And then everything changed. 

This episode was broadcast April 17, 1967.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: April 13

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1967: Episode 210

I think it was January 4, 1982 that I saw this. Given how slow the series could be, and given that I was only eleven, I have long wondered how that show captured me so firmly. In watching it again today, I think I understand why.

Malcolm Marmorstein.

He wrote this episode, and if he had been hired to write a pilot for DARK SHADOWS, he could not have done a better job. Of course, for most people, this IS the pilot for DARK SHADOWS since broadcasts and collections usually start on 210. Although subsequent episodes drag, this one cracks along surprisingly quickly. It introduces everything we need to get us hooked and eschews anything minor enough to be left for later. The strategy is apparent in hindsight, and some of it is a happy coincidence, but the intent matters less than the result in this case… somewhat the opposite of real life.

Breaking down the episode, the elegance of its construction becomes clear.

The teaser cruises through Eagle Hill cemetery as Victoria describes the depths to which some men will sink -- desecrating sacred ground, sinking to depths of corruption, and violating that which should remain sealed forever. We know a vampire is coming, but how? A second party is implied, and they’re not going to be very nice. The story and our expectations are immediately raised and we have yet to meet a single character… until we come inside, where Jason is harassing Willie. The big one is abusing the little one, demanding that he account for his whereabouts and doing so violently. David and Goliath. Shrill and meek. Had we started earlier, it would be tougher to be on Willie’s side. Starting here? Jason is the villain. He accuses the bruised kid of having a scheme, and the kid obviously lies to the Irish galoot, gazing at the portrait conspiratorially. It’s as if he and the man in the painting already have a relationship. Cut to opening credits.

A lovable weasel. A bully. A silent and stern third party, hanging on the wall like a watchful ally, holding his action. Only a few lines, but resonantly human to anyone who’s been victimized by a know-it-all lout. Somehow, we know this power dynamic is bound to change, and that, for once, the know-it-all knows zip.



As we return, Jason gets physical, grabbing the kid and roughing him up. As they bicker, we hear the name “Collins family.” Nice people. Long history. Money. The man in the painting… an incestor of them? Willie’s been doing research. He swears innocence, but Jason contends with mordant wit that there’s not a Bible written that Willie could swear to. Then, a payoff is mentioned. Willie is getting money through Jason from someone named Liz Stoddard, and he’s to start packing to go.

As it goes on, we see the other side of Jason as he slimes his way around an iron lady of a matriarch, oozing subtle threats and extracting bitter payoffs, later confiding in an impossibly beautiful girl who must be her daughter. We feel immediate respect and sympathy for both of them. They are as captivating as Jason and Willie were nefarious. These scenes alternate with Willie at the crypt, driven by a phantom heartbeat, Indiana Jonesing his way around the graves of other prominent Collinses from the 1700’s, including someone named Naomi Collins. He works out a rope and pulley system --  implying an ex-sailor… this is Maine, right? -- to pry off a vault lid. It’s a black sequence broken only by smokey grays and tentative strings. When the pulley excruciatingly unlocks the ring from the lion’s mouth, we’ve left any kind of Collinwood that Liz, Jason, and Victoria are a part of. They never ran it. This place belongs to what’s behind the secret slab that suddenly-then-slowly grinds open. To whatever’s under the chains the kid breaks. When the spectral heartbeat stops. In the coffin. A force within as ready as a feral animal, primed to strike strike when the lid is opened, With the hand, the frilly cuff, and the regal, dead eye of a black stoned ring.

Characters with potential. Characters to love despising. A grand house with a past deeper than anyone knows. And an undead x-factor that could go anywhere. All exquisitely structured to compel you to watch the next scene and the next episode. Rarely has this much potential energy been promised to an audience. It would take Dan Curtis four years, five days a week, to do it justice. 

This episode hit the airwaves April 17, 1967.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: April 13

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date: Episode 996

 At Collinwood, Alexis meets Trask, startling him.  He is extremely evasive as to why Quentin took Any out of the house.  Trask insists that they must leave.  A knock at the door reveals a returning Quentin, who tells Trask to relax.  He’ll call Cyrus Longworth.  Yeager doesn’t pick up, instead checking on a formula in a safe… a formula emblazoned “Do Not Touch.”  He also takes a sword cane that Cyrus conveniently has at home.  At the Eagle bar, Cyrus interrupts two flirting lovers — Eagle barmaid, Buffie Harrington and her sometimes-boyfriend, Steve.  He attacks the latter and throws Steve out. Buffie says that his new attack is worse than the last time.  Cyrus says he’ll be back with a generous check.  In the drawing room of Collinwood, Quentin questions Mr. Trask as to why a locked drawer opened and its musical contents vanished.  He pushes Trask to associate Bruno or Angelique with Dameon Edwards’ murder.  Trask threatens to leave, and Quentin warns him not to as he goes to visit Cyrus.  True to his word, Yaeger brings a check to the Eagle, but it’s a check from Cyrus.  He threatens Buffie not to associate Cyrus with the payoff.  On the docks, Yaeger locates the Steve and begins to beat him.  Yeager flees when Quentin bursts onto the scene.  Steve pursues Yaeger while Quentin returns to the Eagle.  There, Buffie, also a former Collingwood employee, tells Quentin of Cyrus’ check.  After Quentin leaves, Yaeger appears and strangles her in retribution for telling Quentin the origin of the check.

These episodes have a dizzying amount of plot, especially given that so little feels like it’s going on.  An episode about a forged check takes me back to the dark days of 1966 when the show was about a pen.  But it was the first show to be filmed after a ten day hiatus used to film HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS.

Props must be given to guest star Elizabeth Eis, who played several parts throughout the show, starting out in the Leviathan storyline.  A stunning brunette, she was very much in the mold of the “Curtis Type,” but never quite found footing as a recurring character.  She was certainly good enough for Broadway.  She played four parts in the original Broadway production of ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, as well as understudying Ophelia.  What could top that but an appearance in the Bon Jovi video for “Living in Sin.”  Steve was played by George Strus, who was not only in SHAFT, but also SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT, which is up there with 1776 for DARK SHADOWS alums.  Along for the ride in that film are the fabulous Lisa Richards and Alex Stevens!