DARK SHADOWS 630
DARK SHADOWS 630
“You can’t marry Maggie.
Because you’re not human.”
“Cassandra Collins was a
witch.”
“And I’m her brother so
therefore I am a…warlock?”
“Yes.”
“I knew Cassandra in the past
when she was Angelique, when she first came to this country. I was there. I was
hanged for what she did. When she lived here as Cassandra, I watched what she
did. And the very day she disappeared,
you arrived. As if we had to have some eye of evil constantly staring at us.
Well, I won’t let you marry Maggie. I won’t.”
KLS. Dusk. Unseasonable
storm.
Barnabas has returned.
Nicholas Blair’s master is mentioned as THE DEVIL. All this in the narration. Barnabas
is in the House by the Sea and it seems to be 7pm judging by the bells sounding
off and the clock on the mantle.
Blair vs Barnabas as the
House By The Sea.
Eve must live again and will
be a different Eve. Blair can tell that Barnabas’s conscience is bothering him
and is fortunate that he has none. Eve has been dead so long, Barnabas
counters. He wants to know who the girl will be.
During the theme song and
credits, a voice (which sounds like Humbert Allen Astredo who plays Nicholas
Blair) says, “The part of Victoria Winters will be played by Miss Betsy
Durkin.”
Barnabas asks Blair is he
will get Danielle Roget again, her coming from hell. Blair tries to make him
see that he should think of this as him hiring Barnabas and Julia and as
payment “…and your payment is your continued life.”
Blair knows Barnabas would
want to harm him physically but cannot. Blair flubs, “…or does that idea
disgust them…disgust you.”
He wonders if Barnabas would
love to have his powers, how he would destroy him. If Blair was an ordinary
man, then Barnabas would make a good enemy then. He tells Barnabas shortly
before
Barnabas tells him that they
will not do the experiment if the life force girl is under a spell. Blair tells
him that “I have a way of getting women to do what I want them to do, Mr.
Collins. You shall see that.”
He lets Barnabas out and we
see a kind of partition wall outside the door which I’m not sure was there in
all the past times we saw outside his front door!
Odd since Maggie later in
another ep seems under his spell! Which makes me think of Carolyn, where the
heck has she been? David, too, for that matter.
Later, Maggie is with Blair.
It’s almost become HIS show. It is
He
shows her an opal. Cleopatra’s favored seer foretold death by putting the
opal in the urn. The ripples can be read. He tells her to put the opal in. She
does, thinking this is just a game or she’s just stupid. “Will I hear strange
voices?” She asks cheerfully. “I hope not,” he says, seriously.
“Nicholas, I don’t understand
you.”
She wonders why he is so
serious and pensive. He tells her and sounds disappointed, “You will have a
long and happy life.” She wonders why he
sounds disturbed by that. He is not as long as she spends her life with him. SO
HE’S STILL SELFISH. He knows that she is still thinking about Joe Haskell.
Blair tells her he is leaving and will not be back. He is leaving, he says, for
business reasons.
Later, Maggie tells Vicki
that Blair asked her to marry him and she said might say yes. Vicki asks,
“Nicholas Blair asked you to marry him?”
She tells Maggie she knows
nothing about him and she tries to warn Maggie. They argue over his
trustworthiness. Or lack of.
Maggie is being a bitatch to
Vicki as if their friendship does not matter and she pretty much says that this
has happened to friends before. And adds she and Nicholas will not be living here anyway (implying she will not keep in touch). She leaves, upset and slams the door. Vicki says, “Nicholas
Blair.” She calls to get his phone
number or address.
It seems to be about 11: 30
pm?
Vicki gets to the house by
the sea as Blair is opal spinning and not happy with the results. He is
friendly toward Miss Winters and offers her a brandy to celebrate her first
visit to his house and hopes they can get to know each other better since she is
Maggie’s close friend.
Vicki does not take the drink
but says, “You cannot marry her.” Blair
teleprompter. He asks why and she says, “You’re not human!”
He counters that he thought
humanity is based on his ability to love and he loves Maggie. She goes into the
past history, that Cassandra Collins was a witch.
Blair asks her, “And I am her
brother and therefore, I am a
warlock?”
Vicki says “yes” and then
relates that she was there when Angelique wrecked havoc on the family as
herself and as Cassandra and then she vanished and he appeared…to bring her
back and it is as if he is an eye of evil constantly staring at them all. She
will not let him marry Maggie. He moves at her menacing her. He grabs her arm.
He apologizes and lets her
go. He claims if he were a warlock he could wave his hands and make her
disappear. He claims he loves Maggie and
gave things up for that love but will not burden her with a list. What has he
given up?
“I love Maggie, if you
believe those other things about me, believe that too.” He tells her he has given up a great deal for
that but won’t burden her with the confidences. As long as he has Maggie.
He threatens Vicki when she
refuses to keep silent about his evil and past. She will lose Maggie’s
friendship. She will give him time to break the engagement off. He can make
Maggie forget whatever Vicki tells her without using his powers. DOES HE STILL
HAVE HIS POWERS? He won’t willingly use them? Then how will he make her forget?
Vicki says, “If you truly
love her, you will think about all this.”
He tries to reassert his love for Maggie but leads Vicki to the door and
gives her her jacket. Vicki leaves. Blair goes back to the Drawing Room and
smashes a glass.
Blair voice over.
He thinks that it would have
been easy to make Vicki lose her memory of this.
He wonders why he didn’t do
it. “Maggie Evans makes me human.”
Interesting but silly way of
Blair NOT getting what he wants. So instead…he will do something far worse! It
does not make sense.
He has an idea that won’t
involve his powers. He undigs cement in his basement (?). How’d Tom’s body get
there?
Vicki comes to Collinwood and
the doors seem slightly open. And don’t close totally. It looks like it is
12:30 am? She shuts the electric candles off. And the other light switch is
turned off.
Something scares her and the
doors burst open. Barnabas is standing there. He is collaborating with Dr.
Hoffman on a book about Eric Lang, “I work best at nights.” She asks him to dinner tomorrow night.
ODDLY ENOUGH, VICKI DOES NOT
ASK ABOUT THE PROBLEM HE HAD THAT HAD TO BE SOLVED WITH A CROSS, nor how he got
better, etc. It also does not make much sense. Isn’t she curious about what was
happening to him? Silly. Also silly is the fact that she does not burden him
about Blair and Maggie; he would understand and maybe try to protect her.
So the coffin is undug.
Nicholas pulls the stake out of Tom’s heart and revives him this way. Tom
attacks him but Blair evades him. DOES BLAIR HAVE HIS POWERS OR NOT? It seems
he does. He tells Tom if the stake is used on him again he will be in eternal
darkness forever (in the reprise, it will be eternal damnation).
HOW does Blair direct Tom to
Vicki?
The dogs howl. Tom climbs
into Vicki’s window in her bedroom as she goes to sleep after reading a book.
It’s a scary scene. Vicki wakes up and screams. Tom bares his fangs and comes
at her! GREAT CLIFFHANGER.
Sam Hall and Mel Handlesman’s
credits are the only names in yellow. The soft music is once again used. The
theme ends with a clunk.
Review: I once saw only bits
and pieces of Betsy’s Vicki and to be honest back then, I thought she was
terrible. But seeing this entire episode and in order, she not only looks like
Vicki, she sounds like Vicki AND holds her own in three serious scenes at the
top of this storyline WITH three (four if you count Tom’s vampire) major
players: Blair, Barnabas, and Maggie.
And she’s really not that
bad. This episode has a lot happening, too. Blair has taken over the show and
this time, he’s interesting and multi layered, rather than just the
demon/warlock he seemed to be before.
Frankly when he first
arrived, I thought HE was the devil, then I thought he was just a smaller demon
just under the devil, and then I thought he was a warlock or satanist or
both.
No matter the shaky
background, he just works in this. Completely. The cliffhanger is awesome,
Vicki facing Blair is awesome, Barnabas and the doors opening recall earlier
effective sequences (remember that door opening thing that faced Vicki down in
a very early episode?) and there are less and less flubs –well at least in this
episode despite the fact that some things do not make a lot of sense (see
above).
Maggie’s still a big dope
though. I am also willing to be fair to Durkin (Moltke once met a Vicki on the
street that was not her..I’m betting it was Durkin and not the other one and
thought they were very similar) but let’s face it, NO ONE is Moltke, a very
unique and pretty woman who gave Vicki a backbone even when she didn’t have
one.
She will be missed but again,
this does not mean Durkin is terrible. It was a daunting task replacing what
was initially the lead star of the show. And a much loved character and the
backbone of the series, even now at least to me.
NOTE: Did Tom have a funeral?
Joe mentions it with Chris a few eps ago. Or rather he mentioned when Tom died.
I guess he died I hospital after being attacked by Angelique, was buried, was
moved by Blair and revived as a vampire by Blair using Angelique.
BTW Betsy could have stayed.
She wasn’t as bad as everyone says. AND she was not given a chance and held her
own against heavy hitters of DS in her first ep and right smack in the middle
of a huge storyline for Vicki. MAYBE time and familiarity with the shock of the
recast has done her favors but I think they should have left her in it.
Also: fellow reviewers below remind me of how good Don was as Tom, the vampire. His crawling into the window is one of the creepiest, scariest an animalistic things a vampire ever did on DS.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
In the teaser, Nicholas says that they must bring Eve back to life. Barnabas snorts, “Why? Because Adam can kill her again?” He should have said, “So that Adam can kill her again.”
For the close of the teaser, Barnabas should be staring at Nicholas, horrified. But they hold the shot longer than he expects, and we can see his eyes flicker to the camera, to see if they’re still going.
Nicholas asks Barnabas, “Do you envy me my powers, Mr. Collins? If you had the chance, would you have them, or does that idea disgust them — disgust you?”
Barnabas coughs in the middle of a line: “If you’re planning to bring — (cough) — a woman who is drugged or under a spell, we will not go through with it.”
In the middle of act 1, a stagehand moves the hands of the clock forward as the camera is focused on Nicholas looking out the window. Unfortunately, Nicholas can’t help peeking at the stagehand to make sure it’s happening.
In act 2, Nicholas tells Vicki, “I’ve heard — been described as a great many things by many people, I’d be most interested in hearing your description.”
When Nicholas removes the stake and wakes Tom up, he’s wearing a different shirt than he had when Barnabas staked him in episode 571.
Behind the Scenes:
The part of Victoria Winters will be played by Miss Betsy Durkin, a stage actress who’s on television for the first time today.
Betsy’s acting career started in 1961, in a touring production of the Broadway musical The Boy Friend. She appeared in a summer stock production of Bye Bye Birdie and a dinner theater Li’l Abner, and Off-Broadway in the 1964 flop The Athenian Touch, which closed after one night.
Betsy’s Broadway debut was in 1965, playing a minor role in Cactus Flower, a well-received farce starring Lauren Bacall. She stayed in Cactus Flower for three years, finally deciding to leave in late 1968, when another actress was cast to fill a larger part that she’d been hoping to get. She auditioned for Dark Shadows, and was cast as the new Vicki.
Betsy is naturally a redhead; she dyed her hair for Dark Shadows, to match Alexandra Moltke.
Also auditioning for the recast Vicki was Jaclyn Smith, who had just married Roger Davis (Peter/Jeff). I’ve seen conflicting stories for why Jaclyn didn’t get the role. Some sources say that the producers didn’t want real-life newlyweds on the show, some say that it was her Texas twang, and some say that she did get the offer, but turned it down. Jaclyn and Roger were married until 1975, and she became famous in 1976 as one of Charlie’s Angels.
One more note — if you don’t recognize the comic book panel above, it’s from the first issue of the Gold Key Dark Shadows comic, which we talked about in Episode 529: Missing Adventures.
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