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.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: July 25

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1969: Episode 807

Tate pressures Aristede to reveal Petofi, but instead hears that the Count is in suspended animation, and only has a few more weeks to find his hand before a curse consumes him. Jamison, possessed by the Count, bluffs his way into freedom, then has Magda take him to Barnabas.

Welcome to the Gordon Russell Fan Club. Be seated.

I think, of all the deceased DARK SHADOWS luminaries, Gordon Russell is the one I’d like to meet most. As fans of the show, we focus so much on the actors -- the collective face of the show -- that we forget the writers who gave them their sound. Dramatic writing is crushingly hard. Keeping individualized voices, especially when so many of them come from the same social world, is a difficult task on its own. But that’s not even the toughest part. DARK SHADOWS episodes are like telephone cords made of progressing Möbius strips. Most dramatic scenes are about economy. Nothing can be wasted. You have discoveries and resulting conflicts eliciting change. A chain of those creates the play. Badda boom, etc. No matter the medium, this never changes. But on DARK SHADOWS, you have to do that and also stretch the storytelling to the longest format possible… one that makes a Wagner opera look like a Bazooka Joe comic strip. But you can’t let it feel stagnant. Philip Glass luxuriates in the fact that his listeners know that he’ll take his time. Soap fans think they want action-action-action when what they actually want is to distract themselves for as long as possible with people they care about doing things that are vitally important. If a standard writer had been given the outline to 807, they would have written a script half as long and a tenth as interesting. Russell and the other writers fill the scenes with intense discoveries and purpose, fleshing it out with memorable characters, but with no linguistic flab. How they do it is simply the alchemy of their art. I wish I could replicate it, but in lieu of that, I have no recourse but to marvel at it.

Russell is helped by dropping one of 1897’s most easily-forgotten exposition bombs, courtesy of Aristede, the Smithers to Petofi’s Montgomery Burns. Petofi’s mission to find his hand has been going on for a century, placing him beginning it within a year of Barnabas’ initial entombment. If publishers realized there could be a DARK SHADOWS author whose name is not Lara Parker, we could enjoy a book of short stories looking at the adventures over that century. Just imagine Quentin and Desmond using the hand for dimensional travel. A young Nicholas Blair using it. And so on. Petofi is helped by how others refer to his legacy as much as what he does. In this, Tate calls him someone who enjoys only the suffering of those around him. This both clashes with Thayer David’s ebullient performance and gives it subliminal menace. That mix -- Petofi’s jovial appearance versus the fog of evil that others describe -- may be what makes him one of the richest and most watchable characters in all of DARK SHADOWS. He is their Falstaff and their Gloucester all at once. Helping this is the fact that he’s the only character on the show to be played to the hilt by three actors, all of whom are named David -- Thayer David (whose first name was actually David), David Henesy, and David Selby.

Coincidence?

But where would Petofi be without the writing? Nowhere at all. It’s fitting that this episode should feature Charles Delaware Tate and his curse so prominently. That’s a strange story -- even beyond Barnabas and Josette, it’s the closest we come to pure fairy tale. Imagine writing characters who inflame the public imagination so ardently. Like Tate’s powers to craft paintings that spring to life, that’s what the DARK SHADOWS writers must have faced at this time. How much are they Tate and vice-versa? And does that make Dan Curtis their Count Petofi?

Come to think of it, he was an avid golfer who was often seen wearing a single glove….

Coincidence?

This episode hit the airwaves July 29, 1969.