The Dark Shadows Daybook: August 5

Taped on this date in 1969: Episode 817

By PATRICK McCRAY

With David’s life in the balance over two centuries, Quentin learns that he lacks the one thing Petofi is determined to master: Time. David Collins: David Henesy. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Petofi allows Quentin to visit Barnabas in his coffin, and learns that the road to 1969 might be more challenging than he thought. Beth breaks from tending to David, now astrally trapped in Jamison’s body, to serve Barnabas… until Petofi shows her a vision of her vampiric future. 

Somewhere in the wilderness… as seen on a backlot.

Please, Robert Bly, put away the drum and step away from the fire with that drink. Who can see it’s a pousse cafe in a Yeti mug, anyway? No one’s impressed. Sure, we all think it’s mead. Now please go away before Paul Elam hears us and wakes up. Yes, we’re going to talk about manliness, as is my wont, but not your kind. We shall have no deep feelings shared nor bonding acknowledged, thank you. Because that’s all a bit much. Manhood is the opposite of flatulence. He who smell’t it is most certainly incapable of having dealt it. 

Go back and read that in Count Petofi’s voice. Yes, you hear the music, too. 

Manhood. Whatever that means. This really is a core reason of why I love Dark Shadows. Wallace and I have been in the midst of assembling the Daybook Book in fits and starts, and I frequently inundate him with new title ideas. Today’s? “How to Love Dark Shadows.” More accurately, it might be, “Why I Love Dark Shadows.” Episode 817 is a good place to start. 

As Wallace once wrote, “Dark Shadows doesn’t tell a story. It accumulates one.” If there is any real story to the show, it’s ours… the viewers’. Dark Shadows is a tough show to watch. It’s an even tougher show to “get.” It takes time away from our lives. Yet it becomes a genuine companion, ever-changing. And we can’t help but be changed by it. 

So, what is it… this Dark Shadows? You know the answer. It’s okay, we’re amongst friends. 

Dark Shadows is Barnabas Collins. Thus, transitively speaking, he is what changes us. Knowing him. Watching the arc of his second life… maybe even his Sansara. Feeling the pressure to make decisions burst into full-on choice. This daily immersion slowly wears away the import of our world and replaces it with his. 

817 is so beautifully resonant because it lets us step back and look at Barnabas and Quentin as the pure friends we always wanted them to be. Every Gilgamesh needs an Enkidu. That was a lesson in manhood for me when I first saw it. These things, if they are to have value, must be unexamined. They can only be acknowledged through silence. Ergo, I must write an essay about it. What’s more, Dark Shadows lets us ponder the power of the soap opera format to build that friendship in real-time, from a place of intense distrust. Its success both sneaks up on us and seems like the most natural thing in the underworld. Quentin approaches Barnabas in the coffin, and the respect and affection they share is effortless. David Selby does most of the heavy lifting in the scene. It’s some of his best work because it’s so relaxed, attentive, focused, and authentically kind. In the midst of a ludicrous situation which sneezes squarely in the soup of “write what you know,” he is like the very real stone in a Zen sand garden. 

Later, when Quentin compares notes with Beth, also having returned from Petofi’s, their conversation about the supernatural is stunningly casual-yet-intense. They are beyond romance and beyond the bodice-ripping hullabaloo that encapsulates how we met them. They are, maybe, friends, but colleagues-in-wartime, first. My, how things have changed in four months. And who was the agent of those changes? Barnabas, by action and by example, goes from being a stranger in his own hometown to the Jackie Daytona that everyone needs-but-never-knew-it. Beth needs a concerned mentor with no ulterior motives. Quentin needs a (literally) Edwardian hand of structure with no judgement. Selby’s Quentin is increasingly aware that, no matter how much Barnabas divulges about the future, there is something darker that he’s not being told. A few months ago, Quentin would have seized on the existence of such a secret. Now, we get the sense that he’s somewhat relieved at being sheltered from it. It’s a world all too eager to talk about ugly truths, and as 1897 goes on, it does so with less comical hysteria and more wistful acceptance. This is an episode where a twelve year old boy asks a woman what it feels like to die. 

They’ve all been awakened from the sleep by Barnabas Collins. And so have we. Dark Shadows, for once, talks about what matters at the most primal level… how the ritual changes us. Its characters become us and we become the characters. Down to Beth watching herself become a vampire on a suspiciously television-like box in Petofi’s chambers. It’s the only show that matters. 

This episode was broadcast Aug. 12, 1969.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: August 12

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1970: Episode 1083

Sebastian Shaw disturbs Hallie with news from the beyond, but will he open his third eye in time to see that Collinsport’s most venerable hunk is coming his way? Professor Stokes: Thayer David. (Repeat; 30 min.)

David and Hallie find a dollhouse of Rose Cottage in the playroom and are disturbed by the presence of dolls that resemble themselves. Driven my Hallie’s evasions, Professor Stokes visits Sebastian. Although he implies that Sebastian is a fraud, Sebastian demonstrates his powers through a heartfelt vision that ends in the sight of the children sleeping. After Stokes leaves, Sebastian confides in Roxanne that the children were actually dead. At Collinwood, David and Hallie try to break Gerard’s spell by burning the dolls. When they return to the playroom, the dolls have reappeared, unharmed.

The irony of Dark Shadows’ broadcast history is that, by the time they were making the episodes that would have really given kids nightmares, the kids for whom the show was vaguely aimed were too old to be scared. Or given nightmares by soap operas. Or maybe still watching But 1083 is a fine candidate for nightmare inducement, and a perfectly good reason to walk a little slower on the way home from school. Lately, Jonathan Frid and Grayson Hall are not reliably waiting to greet them

It’s a cursed storyline. Cursed by the fact that we already know they’re doomed. Yes, the whole point is averting it, but at no point do our heroes catch a glimmer of hope. In this episode, we have only the third stringers to rely upon. And I hate to call Professor Stokes this, but the role of skeptic is a strange one for him, and it’s a little odd to try and get behind him not believing in something. Especially because he gets it wrong. And that’s what they do in the Ragnarok sequence. They get it wrong at every crucial point when getting it right would thwart Gerard. He is a villain whose plan only works because of entropy. An all-star can only get it right so many times. Stokes not only has trouble detecting that Sebastain Shaw is the real deal, but he even fails to detect the only lie told by him: that the children were in no real danger. In fact, he saw them dead. This isn’t a testament to Stokes’ waning powers; it’s a tribute to the insurmountable odds he faces in near ignorance.

Killing kids is one of horror’s few taboos, reserved only when the medium has no interest in charming the audience. (And to witness what happens when you effectively break that taboo, revisit Pet Sematary.) Sure, kids have died/almost died before on the show, but never just… because. Heroes constantly outmatched? One of the only things that makes much horror watchable is the knowledge that the forces of good may somehow escape. Or, as with the 1982 The Thing, at least take “it” with them on the way down. The last victory Gerard wants is a moral one, and it’s clear that none will happen on his watch.

1083 typifies the storyline in that David and Hallie are on the front lines of both the attack and the defense. Fewer things are more unsettling than trying to solve a problem you may be unwittingly creating, and episodes like these are strange precursors to the feeling that Candyman gave audiences. There, too, the heroine is a lightning rod for manipulation by the villain. Dollhouses, as I’ve noted before, are testaments to our desire to control. As David and Hallie try to sidestep its rules by burning the dolls, Gerard must again deliver a memo in inevitability by making them reappear.

Why a dollhouse? Coming up on a future episode, David and Hallie will see themselves replacing the figurines within. It’s what I consider to be the single most disturbing image on the show. Gerard’s message is a clear one; David and Hallie are already dolls in a dollhouse, themselves: Collinwood. Gerard is its clear master, and maybe he has been for a very, very long time.

This episode hit the airwaves Aug. 19, 1970.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: July 29

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1978: Episode 556

When Nicholas Blair announces his plan to unleash an army of satanic supermen, will Barnabas be blackmailed into the oddest job of all? Angelique: Lara Parker. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Nicholas announces his plan to rule the world. To execute it, he must have Julia Hoffman create a race just like Adam. But she is controlled by Barnabas, and so he must be controlled by his concern for Victoria, which gets manipulated by the theft of her engagement ring.

It’s that time of year again, when we commemorate the accidental destruction of the Collinwood set, which occurred when a cleaning went awry. Due to that, it's a special time for the show, where the action moves either to the Old House or the house by the sea, and just as the viewers are on summer vacation, it feels a bit like the show is, also. Humbert Allen Astredo and Lara Parker sport lovely tans and even Jonathan Frid is playing Barnabas’ nervousness with an easygoing air. It’s almost Dark Shadows: Live at the Sands. However, it has a sense of discipline and focus that keeps the episode true to the show. The episode also features Lara Parker’s first appearance as a vampire, and she makes a delightful one. She was always more than capable of playing a seductress. Now, she has to. Girl’s gotta eat. And the fact that she must resort to seduction rather than use it as an occasionally amusing option is an irony that eclipses the obvious one.



The cultural influences running around in 556 are as abundant as the number of moving pieces in Nicholas’ plan. But, coming out just a year after You Only Live Twice, the Bond influence, shown through Nicholas, is true CinemaScope. It’s a plan only a madman could brew up -- and not because it involves a proposed satanic army of reanimated corpse descendents. That’s already in the Collinsport city budget. That’s covered. No, it begins to fray at the edges when it relies on a scientist who doesn’t know what she’s really doing. Who’s controlled by an ex-vampire who wants nothing to do with any of it. See, he’ll control the doctor, who’ll control the production of the atom age army of supermen. But the ex-vampire will be controlled by Vicki, who’ll be controlled by the first reanimated patchwork corpse man. Angelique will control them all… kind of. But she’s a resentful vampire who steered clear of the Vicki: 1795 storyline, so how reliable is that?

556 presents the show’s most Rube Goldberg scheme, crying out for the oompapa brand of Danny Elfman music. Prior to this, I’d questioned Nicholas’ morals, but never his sanity. Now? I fully expect him to be selling pants for fish before the week is out. The lynchpin of the whole thing is having Angelique stop trying to bite the hunky new sheriff’s deputy long enough to put on a costume and terrify Vicki as a flesh and blood ghost of herself. At that point, she strongarms Vicki into giving up her engagement ring from Jeff Clark or Peter Bradford. (Candy mint, breath mint, pick one, pick both. Gotta catch’em all.) You see, Nicholas needs to give Adam the ring. And when he does, I’d say it’s darned romantic looking. So then Adam takes the ring to Barnabas to convince him that Nicholas means business. Or something like that. I had a nosebleed and passed out somewhere in the middle of describing that.

The world had been clamoring for a James Bond/Brady Bunch/Munsters crossover. Be careful what you wish for. In this case, they pull off the strangeness beautifully. Every single moment is controlled with astonishing discipline. At any point, any of this could’ve descended into camp. Instead, it skims millimeters above the surface, never so much as getting a droplet. It’s easy to say that Dark Shadows is renowned for pulling off this kind of stunt, but in this episode, they top even themselves.

What’s most important is that Nicholas Blair will return.

This episode hit the airwaves Aug. 12, 1968.