The Dark Shadows Daybook: May 23

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this day in 1969: Episode 765

As Barnabas pumps Beth for information, will Magda pump Quentin full of silver bullets? She’s locked, loaded, and ready to say “I’m sorry” six times in a row. Alex Stevens: Quentin Collins. (Repeat; 30 min.)

With a wolf on the prowl, Barnabas knows that Beth holds the key to its secret. Barnabas bites her, and she informs him that the wolf is Quentin and that Quentin has a legacy he doesn’t even know about: two children. Magda, rife with remorse, hunts the wolf, as the wolf stalks the estate. Finally, Magda shoots the wolf, but fatally?

It would be inaccurate and hyperbolic of me to say this episode is “pure action,” so I will. For Dark Shadows, this is pure action. And if Dark Shadows action has a name (other than Thayer David), it’s Alex Stevens. We owe him a lot. He performs several spectacular falls in this one, on par with his astoundingly Marvel Comics explosion through the Evans Cottage window earlier in the series. His greatest stunt may have involved padding on the floor, but I didn’t see it, and the sudden reality of it is stunning. On the attack, the werewolf leaps over the railing on the second story landing in the foyer, lands, and keeps going. If you own an ankle, you realize what an impressive stunt this is, simply in its blunt relatability. It’s a straightforward moment, and it may be the most magical sight on the show.

Because special effects are clearly unreal, even at their most realistic, they are inherently devoid of wonder. The great Ray Harryhausen may be a magnificent artist and technician, but magician, he ain’t. Even when his work defined ‘state of the art,’ the herky-jerky movement and weirdness of scale immediately told you to start using euphemisms like “heightened” later on lest you be harassed by his devotees.

Magic is different. Magic shows the impossible as possible and leaves as the only conclusion: this happened. At that point, apologies to the makeup crew, Stevens could have gotten away with no appliances at all. Just a t-shirt that said, “werewolf,” and we’d be sold. It’s a moment of sudden wonder, and suddenly, from the floor up, Collinwood stops being symbolic of anything and becomes a real place.

It taped today, but it played on Friday, May 30, and I think that’s a symbolic day. It’s a good day to bring in a werewolf at his most exciting. And I hope the choice was strategic. This was, for many, the last day of school for three glorious months. In the past few days, Jonathan Frid and David Selby had recorded their contributions to the album, Original Music From Dark Shadows, which would become a massive hit in that year of massive hits. Viewmaster reels were steady sellers. It was the year of the Barnabas Collins Dark Shadows Board Game. And this one, action-packed, exposition packed installment slammed the locker door on school for the best part of the best year of the best show that millions of kids had ever seen. It was the last day they had to run home from anywhere to see it, and the writers ensured that the marathon mattered. It certainly feels as if there is more screentime for Stevens than on any other episode of the program.

Dark Shadows may have very well been at its zenith. Ratings and demographics were measured differently then, and so I can’t state anything definitively about who was watching. My instinct tells me that, given the items for sale and the significance of the day, this may be one of the most-enjoyed episodes of the entire series. It was certainly the most meaningful for a nation of kids. I don’t need anthropological data to back me up on that.

A great episode? Certainly. Mature? Thank goodness, no. You have bats. Beth, with a vampire’s dream of an endless neck, bitten and controlled. Barnabas learns of Quentin’s curse, the children, and finally, what he’s doing in 1897 at all. The last part is the vegetables of the episode, but at least there’s cheese sauce. The enlightenment of Barnabas Collins has been coming for months and months, and you know the writers are planning something big when they finally plug in the light bulb over his head. Now, equipped with as much of the truth as anyone knows, the adventure of 1897 should be concluding. Barnabas should be climbing into his coffin for the voyage home.

Of course, a certain Count is about to hear that a certain body part is waiting for him in Collinsport. And if stuntman Alex Stevens is magic, the Count is sorcery. 

This episode hit the airwaves on May 30, 1969.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: May 30

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1967: Episode 251

When Barnabas wakes up to a homicidal, stake-wielding Maggie, will he finally swipe left for dear life? Maggie: Kathryn Leigh Scott. (Repeat. 30 min.)

Barnabas awakens to find Maggie hovering over his coffin, ready to stab him. He stops her and leaves to speak with Vicki, who has a clear love for and perhaps connection to the past. When he later shows her a lace handkerchief belonging to Josette, she is smitten with the past. This sparks Barnabas’ interest. Returning to the Old House, Barnabas warns Maggie that she will die if she does not embrace her identity as Josette.

Then there’s that time when the gentle guardian of Sarah… and David and Amy… threatened to kill his kidnap victim, Maggie Evans, because she wasn’t more easily hypnotized into willingly becoming the reincarnation of someone she never met. The only French she speaks has the word ‘fries’ after it. But there she is, anyway.

For defenders of Barnabas, it’s a tough sequence to come back from. It’s easy to see why so many have a taste for the ruthless and manipulative Barnabas and feel detached from the vaguely prissy and avuncular hero he later becomes. But as someone who is vaguely prissy and avuncular, myself, I would tell them that they have to just deal with it. As long as, you know, I were sure they’d still like me. Then I’d apologize somehow. Barnabas, perhaps, spends the rest of the series doing just that.

It’s Jonathan Frid’s third performance in the series, along with Good Barnabas and Bramwell. I’d wager it’s the easiest. The objectives are a clear and wicked joy to play, but there is an ambiguity here that gives the part a challenging texture. It’s clear that if he really wanted to kill Maggie, she’d be dead. Is it her beauty that stops him from doing so, or is it the fact that he knows that, while he may have it in him, it would still be wrong? Both Maggie and Barnabas find themselves cast by fate to roleplays for which they are profoundly unqualified. Maggie has no interest in Josette. Barnabas is not by nature a violent man. But she looks like Josette. And he’s an emotionally ruined and unwilling vampire and completely unintentional, one-way time traveler. He’s gone from a world of fishing and finery to curses, betrayal, threats, and suicide. In theory, nothing should matter and life will be easier if he becomes as bad as the Angeliques, Trasks, and Forbeses who stuck him here. They always win, anyway, and he clearly can’t rely on anyone to stake him, unless it’s at a time inevitably inconvenient for it. He makes a good show of being a Big Meany, but he can’t seal the deal. We know this because his attempts to do so are as self-sabotaged as Roy Hinkley’s attempts to escape from the Island.

Because he can’t mind-control Maggie, setting her free isn’t an option, so he may simply have to kill her for his own good. A lifetime sentence for him is no laughing matter.

His encounter with Vicki in the episode only complicates things. In Vertigo, the story from which this is clearly based (far more than Dracula), the Barnabas character played by Jimmy Stewart never recognizes that his ideal woman is right in front of him -- Midge, played by Barbara Bel Geddes. Dark Shadows complicates this because Barnabas indeed recognizes that Vicki may not be a ringer for Josette, but she gets him. With no coercion. Unfortunately, Barnabas -- through the embarrassing use of force -- has committed to the idea of reviving Josette in Maggie. His ego won’t let him easily withdraw from that. And yes, shame on him and how sad. This chiding ignores the fact that his ego, which is simply the comfort he takes in his own judgment, is all he has left. Sacrificing that means sacrificing everything. Until he has the certainty of hope, that is a lot to ask of anyone. Just because Barnabas is an undead monster doesn’t mean he’s inhuman.

This episode hit the airwaves June 12, 1967.