DARK SHADOWS 583
DARK SHADOWS 583
“Willie! If you touch that
body, I will kill you!”
“I do know that Barnabas
wouldn’t do anything to harm me.”
Vicki. The sleeping house
seems to be at peace. The circular machine does not look as violet. Different
reprise. Willie grabs the sheet. Barnabas stops him, “If you touch that body, I
will kill you.” Pause, credits.
He also says CollinSwood.
Willie talks to Barnabas about Maggie. Willie tells him to use Julia, use
Vicki. He asks what Maggie ever did to him. Barnabas tells him she is the most
available. He reminds Willie that Willie helped him to try to convert Maggie
into Josette before he fancied himself in love with her.
Willie worries some more and
tells Barnabas he’ll get another girl for him. Barnabas counters, “You trust
Julia, you trust me.” Willie will
promise not to interfere with the experiment if Barnabas promises not to use
Maggie. Barnabas will not promise.
Barnabas flubs and confuses
his lines. “No point in trying to prevent that something cannot happen.” HUH? He doesn’t want to involve anyone let
alone Maggie but he has no choice. Willie says, “We just do what we have to
do.”
Day: outside somewhere near
Collinwood: terrace: chairs and table: Maggie and Vicki have coffee. They
discuss Joe and Jeff and how both have changed. Maggie calls herself a fool.
Yup, pretty much. Vicki says, “I don’t think we’re fools.” Which makes her a fool. Mic shadow.
Maggie explains she ran into
Joe in town and he just grinned, said hello and moved on as if they had just
been acquaintances.
Barnabas comes to greet both
women. He sits down with Maggie as Vicki leaves to get more coffee. From the
outside window, we see inside Collinwood’s drawing room (?) and there are
lights flickering.
Maggie is asked by Barnabas
if it is lonely without her father. She has to make adjustments.
She feels as if this part of
her life she waiting for something, “I don’t know what.” She feels as if she’s in a vacuum and has to
break it. She has to get a job soon. What happened to her job in the coffee
shop???? Barnabas asks her if she will get a job here, she says IDK.
She wants to go to
Even worse, this monster
Barnabas tells her, “Consider me your friend.”
He’s a real $%## Bast&A. Maggie has to go shopping and Vicki calls
after her as she leaves, to let her know her plans.
David is off on a camping
trip and it took some thing to getting him off. Barnabas is sorry about her
unhappiness over Jeff. Next week, he tells her, there is a concert in
Cottage: night: Willie sneaks
outside the French doors. Maggie gets scared but lets him in. Mic shadow. He
tells her to go away and gives her 50 dollars. He wants her to take a bus to
He even tells her that
Barnabas is involved, “It’s not his fault but he’s in it whether he likes it or
not.…”
She explains she saw Barnabas
today and he couldn’t have been nicer. She gets in a “Willie, IDK what’s wrong
with you.” When she questions his
sanity, he yells he’s never been saner.
She thinks he’s had a fight
with Barnabas and he says “I had a fight with him all right.” Maggie claims Barnabas would never do
anything to harm her. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY CHILLING. He’s trying to warn her and
she won’t believe him! And both actors are exceptional in this scene. She gets
in another IDK.
Terrace: Adam vs
Barnabas. He is alone while Barnabas
visits the woman he loves. Adam suggests he will follow Vicki and kill her.
Willie voice over. He finds a
bottle of chloroform in the glass case and…like the season one TARDIS console
controls on DOCTOR WHO the bottle is marked chloroform with the word
handwritten in magic marker on the bottle.
Willie accidentally knocks
over a stool and Barnabas opens the door to the basement …behind him the set is
totally black and unseen. Huh? Barnabas
voice over.
11: 35 pm: Maggie sleeps with
a loud ticking clock nearby. Willie talks to himself. He just walks right into
Maggie’s room via the French doors and as he chloroforms her, he asks her to
forgive him…twice. You would think she would lock her doors after everything
has happened to her.
He carries her out as
Barnabas knocks on the bedroom door! Barnabas just walks into Maggie’s room! He
finds Maggie gone. Barnabas recalls that Adam will kill Vicki…
Review: Just stunning! Sam
Hall is a very good writer for this show. He really knows the characters and
how to get them to mix with each other and plot. The whole Maggie thing,
kidnapped by Willie, targeted by Barnabas is just a great idea and the show was
brave to try this and go with it.
Unfortunately later on, they
sort of cop out but…there was no real way out of it. The REAL ending to the
Maggie vs Barnabas thing was just recently dealt with on Big Finish’s KINGDOM
OF cds.
Barnabas being nice to Maggie
is just terrifying because he’s just being so fake to her while plotting
against her and all the while being nice to her AND to Vicki.
Willie has to be loved for
his actions here but his desire to get another woman is akin to Egor in BRIDE
OF FRANKENSTEIN…he doesn’t care if he does something evil…he just won’t do it
to Maggie!
In any case, Willie has charm
here just in the fact that he is trying to save Maggie and has loyalty to her.
It’s also chilling that he
suggests Barnabas use Vicki! Very scary in that it has people acting nice but
secretly plotting against those they are acting nice to …and these are the
heroes!
Supposedly. Although in DS
there really are no heroes. Just villains. Some time seems to have gone by
since Joe and Jeff’s respective break offs.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
They completely botch the music cue at the end of the teaser. Willie has a scalpel and he’s ready to hack the Bride’s body to pieces. Barnabas appears behind him, and shouts, “Willie!” and then there’s a huge dramatic sting. Except Barnabas has one more line to deliver: “If you touch that body — I will kill you!” They’ve already used up the dramatic sting, so there’s nothing to do but quietly fade to black.
Barnabas tells Willie, “You must accept what’s going to happen. There’s no point in trying to pretend that something cannot happen.”
Near the beginning of Vicki and Maggie’s scene, something strikes Maggie as funny, and she starts smiling for no apparent reason. It happens in the middle of the line, “Well, I think most men have trouble doing that.” She suddenly smirks, and then she’s obviously suppressing a laugh for the next thirty seconds, all the way through Barnabas entering and sitting down at the table.
Behind the Scenes:
On the day that this episode aired — September 18, 1968 — Variety ran an article about Dark Shadows titled, “Monsters Making Good, So Dan Curtis Will Add Werewolf to Shadows“. I haven’t been able to track down a copy of that article, but it sounds amazing. Does anybody out there have it?
For some reason DARK SHADOWS EVERY DAY mixed this episode up into the last episode?
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