DARK SHADOWS 508
DARK SHADOWS 508
Lara. Different reprise. This
time as Stokes talks, Julia accidentally interrupts him. He talks over her.
Julia tells him if his own life is at stake, he must not do this: enter the
dream to confront the witch. He counters that Barnabas Collins will die if he
does not.
Stokes has had a hair cut.
When he begins the dream, he asks who is there and will not open the door until
the person answers. It is Sam Evans, thick glasses on to protect his eyes.
Angelique laughs somewhere.
He wonders how they are linked. Stokes leads Sam in the dream, Sam protesting
that if he leads, he will die. Stokes recites the riddle before Sam can. Sam,
as if a construct of Angelique’s says, “No.”
Stokes does. “Through sight
and sound and faceless terror, through endless corridors by trial and error,
ahead a blazing light does burn (the sub titles say, a head of blazing light
does burn) and one door leads to the point of return.”
Stokes also closes the door
instead of letting Sam, his beckoner, do it. He doesn’t let Sam lead him
anywhere. He tells Sam he has to like it. We hear exactly one note of the
Josette music and flub: Stokes says the music is charming. How can he tell? It
goes on…for about six more notes.
Angelique comes out of one of
the doors, dramatically. Stokes tells her he loathes injustice when she asks
why he wants to save Barnabas Collins…he deserves it, she says. She asks if he
knows and then figures Stokes is more interested in her than in Barnabas
Collins, which considering the behind the scenes personal lives of the actors,
is ironic in itself. In the back of the room that the door on the left leads
into (the door is open) we see smoke and briefly, a light goes on toward the
floor!?
Stokes cannot resist a look
at her, “You are beautiful.” She asks
why he will not continue to stare at her. He tells her, “I do not trust your
eyes.” Good move, Stokes.
Angelique, at first calls him
Ben. She wants to tell his future. She’s told Ben’s future many times. When he
offers his hand, stupidly, she draws a pitchfork on it. She claims he will stay
here for eternity, a statue among the ruin. She tries to make him mute and to
make his heart beat faster but he claims those are old tricks and he resists
them all, telling her he will die…of natural causes in his own bed and to go
back to her own time.
He asks her who Cassandra
Collins is and she denies knowing who that is. OKAY is she telling the truth? I
doubt it but…she seems to be…but why is that? Is this a separate Angelique? If
so, that makes no sense. Stokes tells her, “You are Cassandra Collins.”
Eventually, she fades away.
Her voice says, “You have not won.” And she laughs again. A door opens and then
closes. Stokes wakes up and tells Julia what happened. He asks for sherry.
Stokes has no compulsion to tell anyone the dream and thus he thinks the curse
is stopped. “Thank God,” Julia exclaims.
He tells her she knows more
than he does but he’s learned enough for one night so he won’t ask her any more
questions. Both of them do not believe
Angelique would give up so easily. A knock comes and it is Sam Evan and Joe
Haskell. They both meet Stokes for the first time. Sam says, “I have to see
you.”
Sam has on YELLOW
PANTS???!!!! What’s that about? Sam refers to “his accident.”
Joe, he says, is babysitting
him while Maggie is in Bangor over night. Doing what? With whom? Sam says, “His
job is to keep an eye on me.”
He jokes that that was a poor
expression on his part but Stokes compliments him, thinking that it was very
adjusted of him to use that phrase.
Sam explains that Stokes’s
name suddenly came to him and he knew he had to come here to speak to him.
Julia tries to cover by making this seem impossible. Sam also snaps at Julia,
“You want me to think I’m going crazy too, huh?” Julia counters, “NO, I DON’T.”
Sam REALLY does not like
Julia. Stokes tells him a small bit about the dream but refuses to tell him
more. Sam and Joe leave.
Sam and Joe are outside near
a white picket fence that looks nice. Joe knows something is going on and he
thinks it has to do with a dream Maggie had about a week ago.
Sam looks up and mentions a
phrase, “…as if we were going to the moon.”
Joe mentions the man that jumped off Widow’s Hill. Some say he is still
around here. Patterson told Sam that the man jumped. Sam tells Joe to leave
him, he can go in by himself, and he’s a “man of leisure” now. He wants to be
alone. Sam gets an IDU, sort of. Joe gets an IDK.
Sam jokes if Joe doesn’t
leave, he won’t let him marry Maggie. Joe leaves and we hear his car drive
away. Leaves of a tree branch move suddenly: a wind effect?
When Sam goes in, I don’t
remember seeing only one banister facing the room and one sideways but that is
what is there. NOTE: outside Sam told Joe he knows Joe locked all the doors and
windows. When Sam goes in, a window on the outside is open and blowing wind
inside. How did Joe not see that from outside the house. Sam made Joe leave. We
see the afghan blanket on the couch.
Creepily, Maggie’s door
closes just as Sam comes in. Sam smokes a pipe. The scene has sound issues. Sam
finds an open window he was sure Joe has closed before they left. Sam goes to
Maggie’s room and calls into it.
When he turns back, he hears
a noise. In front of him is Adam: holding a knife overhead ready to strike, his
face bloody and his body banged up and his clothes a mess. Sam seems to see
him?
It’s a creepy, disturbing
sequence and yes, I know they are entering a BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN phase here
with Monster meets harmless old blind man but it’s, if anything, even more
creepy than the original this time out.
Of course, Adam’s face being bloody adds to the horror of it all and he
looks coldly killer-ish. Of course, David Ford appears to be seeing Adam so
that detracts a small bit.
Stokes vs Angelique has to be
good, right? Right. This is a classic episode and one of my favorites. Then we
have the eerie sequence of Adam appearing in the cottage. And that Sam is not
truly a regular means he can die at any time and that Adam is unpredictable….both
mean that we are not sure what is going to happen. THAT is good TV, especially
in a soap opera.
During the credits, someone
is moving past the outside window of the set as Robert Costello’s credit
appears.
The credits during this 1968
episode end with the year…1967.
I think Dark Shadows Daily got this wrong: Stokes misquotes the Dream Curse poem, as pretty much everyone does. In his case, he says “A head of blazing light does burn,” rather than “Ahead, a blazing light does burn.”
The closing credits roll over a shot of the Old House drawing room. Towards the end, as Robert Costello’s credit appears, you can see someone pass by on the other side of the window.
At the end of the credits, the copyright date says 1967.
- This is the first episode in which Sam appears with both sunglasses and cane to indicate that he is blind.
- DREAM SEQUENCE: Professor Stokes experiences the dream curse (continued from previous episode). He is the ninth victim. He breaks all the rules of the curse and refuses to open any of the doors, which prompts Angelique to appear to him. The beckoner is Sam. The curse is broken, prompting Cassandra to resume it in 517.
- TIMELINE: Joe says that it was "about a week ago" when Maggie experienced the dream curse (occurred in 478).
Bloopers and continuity errors
- In the teaser, Grayson Hall steps on Thayer David's first line, starting to say "And now" too early.
- During the dream, Professor Stokes says, "The music is charming" before Josette's theme starts playing.
- In the final act, as Sam is calling for Maggie, the microphones are not picking up his voice.
- Someone can be seen moving behind the curtain during the closing credits. [My guess is that this is David Ford as you can make out what looks to be a belt on the back of a trench coat.]
- The copyright date for this 1968 episode is given as 1967.
- Lara Parker is credited as Cassandra in the credits but appears only as Angelique.
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