DARK SHADOWS 618
DARK SHADOWS 618
“Oh, Vicki you know how Elizabeth and I feel about you. You’re a member of our family to us.”
“Vicki, if you marry Jeff Clark, it will be the most tragic mistake in your life.”
“It’s not like you to react in such a way, you who don’t believe in dreams, who don’t believe in the supernatural.”
“Do you know something I don’t know?”
“But I think he’s in danger and needs help.”
“Regardless of what I am, what I’ve been, I’m still a woman, Barnabas. I think and feel like a woman. I’ve hated things you’ve done but I’ve never hated you yourself. How could I? The memory of a night in Martinique has never left my mind. You came to me that night and I was full of love for you. How else could I have given you so much of myself. And I knew then that no power in the universe could prevent us from one day keeping the pledge we made that night.”
“I…I made no pledge.”
“Not every pledge is made with words, Barnabas.”
Julia. No reprise. Grandfather clock says 2:30 am. Roger comes down in his robe
and takes Vicki into the drawing room. “Vicki, if you marry Jeff Clark, it will
be the most tragic mistake in your life.”
Roger tells
her not to marry Jeff because he was so terrified for her he just had to warm
her because of a dream.
He explains
the dream in detail. She says, “It’s not like you to react in such a way, you who
don’t believe in dreams, who don’t believe in the supernatural.”
She finds it
hard that a nightmare could change his mind about her marriage to Jeff. HANG
ON: has she already forgotten about the dream curse? WTF?
When she
insists she and Jeff love each other and are going to be married, he tells her
it will be the greatest mistake of her life. She keeps asking him, “Do you know
something I don’t know?” and questions like it.
He thinks
maybe it was a mistake for both of them to forgive Jeff. She calls these remarks
abusive and wants him to tell her what is on his mind. BUT he just did, several
times! The film makes all sorts of jumps an static and aberrations. Vicki has
heard enough and storms out, saying good night.
Roger is
drinking and asks Julia, who just gets in, if she would care for one. She says
no thank you. Before that he gave her a “good evening.” Julia explains she is worried about Barnabas
and gives him the story but without the vampire parts. He’s completely
disappeared after sunset when he went to rest. Most of her story is not true.
Angelique comes
in and down steps and makes some odd hand motion to someone (the crew) as if
she’s waving to someone off screen. Huh? She has brought him a place near the
sea where she will keep him until it is time for them to go away together. She
bites him again. When he comes to later, he tries to tell her Nicholas will not
let her take him away. He asks her why she wants to take him away with her
after all these years of hating him.
“Regardless
of what I am, what I’ve been, I’m still a woman, Barnabas. I think and feel
like a woman. I’ve hated things you’ve done but I’ve never hated you yourself.
How could I? The memory of a night in Martinique has never left my mind. You
came to me that night and I was full of love for you. How else could I have
given you so much of myself. And I knew then that no power in the universe could
prevent us from one day keeping the pledge we made that night.”
She’s
insane. Seeing things that weren’t there.
“I…I made no
pledge.”
As if to
show us how insane she is, “Not every pledge is made with words, Barnabas.”
When he
asks, she reveals yes, she is going to turn him into what she is. Not sure what
they are talking about but apparently he cannot die before dawn if she wants
him to become a vampire. She has moved too quick and she thinks he is right telling
her that. The cock crows signaling morning and that she has to go...at least
twice. He is too weak to move, which is why she brought him here. He will
survive this night and a few others.
Oddly, she
walks up to the door and checks it (apparently looking through some kind of
peep hole) and then comes down, nearly slipping and explains more to him. She needed
a place where he would be “safe” for her while she slept during the day. As she
starts to vanish and talk to him, we hear a light bang.
Next morning
about 9 am, Vicki comes down to the drawing room in a light tan outfit and sees
Julia. Julia has been on the couch all night. She says, “I looked everywhere I could
think of, IDK what else to do.” She explains
to Vicki but leaves out the truth again. When Vicki asks what could have happened
to Barnabas, Julia gives another, “IDK.”
Julia was
not at the old house since about midnight. Vicki suggests Barnabas might have
returned to the Old House but Willie would have told Julia. Julia gets another,
“I…IDK what else to do.” Vicki offers to
take her up to bed but she says no but asks Vicki to wake her if Willie comes
to say Barnabas is back. Julia thanks her and makes a worried expression with
her mouth.
Barnabas
voice over/internal monologue. He wonders who can help him and considers
Angelique would suspect Julia, Willie and even Stokes. He worries she would
harm them if they helped him. “Angelique knows how I feel about Vicki and she
would think that I wouldn’t go to her in my condition.”
Is that a
boulder inside this house?
Barnabas
crawls to the door and opens it but reacts badly to the sun light.
Roger comes
down to the drawing room where Vicki seems to be drinking tea and possibly
having breakfast. He stayed in his room thinking about last night and he wants
to apologize. He thinks his reaction to the dream was all wrong. She is still
angry and not about the dream.
“Oh, Vicki
you know how Elizabeth and I feel about you. You’re a member of our family to
us.”
When Vicki
explains she is not happy about what he said about Jeff, he says this, “I …you didn’t
react the way I hoped you did.”
He asks if
she will forgive him, offering up his apology a few times and then smiling at
her. She does. She asks about if he were up when Julia came home.
In the
woods, Barnabas calls out verbally, “Vicki, I need you. I can’t make it alone.” He asks her to hear him.
Vicki seems
to hear him. Roger seems to, too, “Did someone just come in?” She
says no and goes over to Barnabas’ portrait, almost but not quite in a trance.
She thinks Barnabas is at the Old House now and has to go there. He asks how
she knows. Her answer, “I…IDK.” She adds, “But I think he’s in danger and needs
help.”
Barnabas
holding onto a tree all this time, calls for Vicki to hear him but then falls
to the dirt and passes out. Vicki passed the Old House already. He groans and
she finds him. He wakes up happy she has come to find him but he thinks it is
too late and says so before passing out again. “It can’t be, it can’t be,” she
wails.
Gordon Russell and Ron Sproat’s
credits look as if it’s one credit, not fully pasted down and/or cracked and split and the plastic is shaking at us and
back and we cannot see his last name properly. Something wings by during Sy
Tomashoff’s credit sideways sort of. And just who is Mostoller? The credits are
over the abandoned house interior set.
Review: I
don’t know what it is about this episode. It’s not bad, and certainly there are
episodes that are far greater and more revealing but this feels like an episode
that the show was actually made for, whether it knew it in 1966 and 65 or not.
We sure have Angelique being herself, her deluded self that she can somehow
make this work with Barnabas. Barnabas and Vicki, who have barely seen each
other of late, connected, somewhat telepathically. I know some might think it
is because he once bit her and that he’s under the effects of being bitten himself
here, but I think it goes deeper than that. Not sure I can explain it. I don’t
think…never thought these two loved each other, though there is a case that HE
loved HER and I suppose one might even find evidence she loved him and that
they both still do but it feels like a kindship of connected friends.
That said,
though probably as distant as he is from Liz, Roger, Carolyn and David (does
his cousinship even count?), if Vicki is Liz’s daughter (she is), it would be
the same and a bit far away blood wise for it to be improper or dangerous to
any children they might have (they probably could not) but it still would feel
wrong as if family romantically involved with family. In any case, neither
knows she is Liz’s daughter and that reveal was not even in the writer of Dan
Curtis’ minds at this point. Shame on them.
In any case,
with five heavy hitters here (well, Vicki’s not really but she is THE main
heroine or at least WAS) in Julia, Roger, Barnabas, Angelique and Vicki, this
feels like something special. It might just feel that way and it’s comforting
to see them relying on each other (well not Angelique but Roger and Vicki,
Julia telling Roger and Vicki her worries, and Barnabas considering the safety
of three of his friends and then thinking Vicki capable enough to help him—is she?).
It all
really feels like good, even great DS and I love it to pieces, regardless of
nay sayers.
Vicki confronts Roger about his opinion of Jeff: “Why do you feel hostilities toward him?”
As dawn approaches, Barnabas looks helplessly at Angelique, and forgets his line. He says, “You — you ca –” and then turns toward the teleprompter. “– not going to leave me here,” he adds.
When Barnabas struggles to his feet, he rests a hand on a wooden pillar, which wobbles.
Gordon Russell’s name isn’t fully pasted down on the rolling credits — as the writer credit goes by, you can see Russell’s name flapping, and “Ron Sproat” visible underneath it.
Dark Shadows Before I Die: Dark Shadows Episode 618 - 11/6/68
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