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.

Dead Men Tell Tall Tales

"To me, horror is when I see somebody lying. I mean a person I know. A friend. And he's telling me something that I accept. And then suddenly, as he or she is telling it, there's something that gives them away. They're not telling me the truth." - Jonathan Frid, 2001

Jonathan Frid cemented his place in television history 50 years ago today.

At the time, he'd been a part of the cast of DARK SHADOWS for just a month, taping his twelfth appearance on May 11, 1967 (it would air the following week on May 17.) There's very little in the way of "action" in this episode. While the word vampire was more than a hundred episodes away from first being uttered on the show, the audience already knew who — and what — was responsible for the mysterious illness of Maggie Evans.

Unfortunately, the viewers at home weren't in a place where they could be of any use to the show's characters. When resident vampire Barnabas Collins decides to pay a visit to Collinwood in this episode (in the middle of a thunderstorm and power outage, no less) there's already a sense of tension in the air. He arrives to find Victoria Winters and Carolyn Stoddard alone in the drawing room, a lit candle as their only source of light.

And then the show really begins.

Barnabas decides to entertain the ladies with a tale from Collinwood's past. While her name isn't used, the tale clearly details the death of Josette Du Pres, Collinwood's most perky spirit. The pretense is that Barnabas' tale is a product of his fascination with history. The reality is that he's relating it from personal experience, omitting his own involvement (and culpability) from the narrative.

This is Barnabas Collins is full bloom, suddenly more awkward and vulnerable than Carolyn and Victoria.Throughout much of the tale Frid positions himself between both of his audiences. The performance is as much for Victoria and Carolyn as much as it is for us, and has to work on both levels. He positions himself throughout the scene to face his two audiences, turning away from the ladies when compelled to lie, revealing to us which elements have been altered. For a few minutes he plunges Collinwood into the past. Here's a sample of his dialogue:

"There was a night such as this. A night when a young, beautiful woman was pressed to the limits. She could no longer accept what the future held for her. She knew she had to destroy herself before she became something she did not want to be. She had quarreled with her lover. She tried to send him away, but he would not be put off. He tried to put his arms around her, but she broke away from him and ran out into the stormy night. Her white dress contrasted against the darkness. He ran after her as she headed for the one place on earth that seemed to be designed for the termination of life. Rain drenched her, the winds buffeted her, blowing her long hair wildly. Her clothing was torn by the low branches. Her small white feet were bruised and mud-stained with the stony cruel pathway to the summit of the cliff. The shouts of her lover were lost in the wind as he moved swiftly after her."

The script is credited to Malcolm Marmorstein. If you're thinking Barnabas' dialogue runs a little too purple, that's entirely the point. DARK SHADOWS was originally conceived as a modern gothic romance, the sort usually showing  on their covers dark haired women fleeing old mansions. Victoria was the pulp heroine of DARK SHADOWS, a thinly sketched analog for ABC's (presumed) audience of housewives in need of mystery and adventure in their lives.

What this episode also makes clear is that Barnabas was designed to be a suitor for Victoria. She was a blank slate, a character reaching into the past to find some clues to her real identity. Along comes Barnabas Collins, reaching out to Victoria from the past. And his use of language sounds if it was ripped from the very pulp novels that inspired both her character and DARK SHADOWS.

The threat is not that Barnabas is going to turn his unwanted attention toward Victoria; It's that she's going to invite this corruption into her life. Barnabas makes it clear in this scene that Josette's history will almost certainly repeat itself, if for no other reason than his own lack of self control.

''You're a clever girl" he tells Victoria at the close of the scene. "Just be careful that what happened to Miss Evans doesn't happen to you.''

Note: The quote at the top of the page appears in "Halloween Candy," a collection of interviews and essays by Thomas M. Sipos published in 2001.

Adam Ant as ... Barnabas Collins?

It happened. Sorta.

In 1993, Adam Ant appeared in a movie called "Love Bites," a comedy about a vampire named Zachary Simms who awakens from 100 years of sleep to find himself in a very strange (and inexpensively staged) world. He rousts himself from his coffin, with a costume that includes an inverness cape, black ring and forehead locks.

What, you ask, does this have to do with DARK SHADOWS?

That's right. Malcolm Marmorstein, a writer for the original DARK SHADOWS series who's among the many people to claim credit for creating Barnabas Collins. I've go no intention of wading into THAT dispute here, but Marmorstein wasn't the only talent involved with the show to try to spin off concepts into other programs. Ron Sproat was involved in the "Canadian Dark Shadows," STRANGE PARADISE, while Dan Curtis, Sam Hall and Lela Swift got in on the action with the failed primetime pilot, DEAD OF NIGHT.

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp might have saved themselves the trouble of making an intentionally funny version of DARK SHADOWS had they bothered to watch LOVE BITES, which appears to depend on the same "Rip Van Winkle" jokes of the 2012 film. You can watch some of LOVE BITES in the video below. Don't say I didn't warn you. (Special thanks to the good folks at the WILLIE LOOMIS SAVES COLLINSPORT forum for bringing this to my attention.)