DARK SHADOWS 632 and 633/634

DARK SHADOWS 632 and 633/634 

632

KLS. A brilliant morning of sunshine and all is serene!

 

A black line is running from the House by the Sea on the right. Blair wonders where Adam has disappeared to and about Tom.

 

No reprise. Blair voice over. His turning on of the multi colored ceramic Tiffany light is used in the finale DVD video using that coffee table/elevator music theme of the DS theme music. It could 3 or 2am? But it looks more like 12: 15 and it might be PM as we shall see.

 

He must have Maggie. His moustache looks odd or unbalanced or perhaps it is the way the light hits it or the shadows hit it. He calls Maggie, who is in total darkness (cost saving darkness). They will be united forever in death.

 

Adam comes in and is told about a new mate. Adam asks why Nicholas lied to him; Nicholas tells him it was a mistake. Maggie will be the new life force. Doesn’t Adam remember that Maggie once attacked him? About the new life force and having Eve come to life again, Adam says, “I don’t know. I don’t know if I want Eve to live again.” 

 

“I would rather live the rest of my life alone than be with a woman like Eve.”

 

Blair tells him it is something he must do. “You don’t have to trust me,”  he says but he pleads to let him do it. Adam tells him if Eve hates him again like the former one, he will kill her.

 

Maggie is at Blair’s. She wears a sailor outfit not unlike something that the second Romana (Lalla Ward) might wear in DOCTOR WHO in the late 70s. Blair calls her particularly enchanting tonight.

 

When he hangs up her coat, he seems to show signs of regret for what he is about to do to her. He does seem to love her…but…

 

 

Maggie says YES to his marriage proposal. He wants to get married tonight. It seems to be 12:15pm?

 

Nicholas wonders if she is changing her mind and tells her not to think even though she complains marriage is a big step and to leave the town she lived in her whole life is, too. He wants to marry her tonight and leave. He has a flat in London and wants to take her there. He tells her, “We both have problems but does that mean that you don’t want to marry me? That you don’t want to be my wife.” She says no and he hugs her.  

 

 

It’s odd as a kid or even a teen in the 60s, one might think Nicholas is just a monster doing monster things to a victim character like Maggie, who is a main character and that’s he’s just doing what monsters do. But seeing this today, it has rather more ominous, sinister, and creepy implications. Nicholas wants her and has to have her. No doubt he is a monster but also loves her in his own way but also will victimize her against her will. It’s horror and horrible.

 

Miss Poland plays a nurse (Bobby Ann Woronka?).

 

 

She tells Chris that Amy is a disturbed child and he must have patience with her. Chris says, “I understand.”  We see a colorful fish tank.

 

 

Chris voice over as he thinks about the weather being clear and cold. He also worries about a full moon. We see dolls on a mantle that looks like it is over a fireplace (in an asylum?) and one looks like Raggedy Ann.

 

This is the first indication we are truly given as to him being a werewolf or wolf man. I don’t know whether to shudder or be impressed by Amy’s first scene as the actress is pretty good conveying a disturbed kid.

 

Chris gives her a present of a painting set and she throws it. She asks why he didn’t come before. “I wrote to ya,”  he says. Chris tells Amy he will stay in Collinsport for her, despite what he was planning to do: leave.

 

She cries over his shoulder not to leave her when he decides to promise to stay.

 

 

NOTE: it occurs to me that Chris’ choice to heed Amy’s lonely plea is the reason the next scene happens and that the hotel manager DIES. It’s a sad result of him doing something good and that’s the werewolf/wolfman story in a nutshell: sad.

 

Collinsport Inn. HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN SINCE WE SAW THAT??? Then we see who I think is called Mr. Wells, Conrad Bain from DIFFERENT STROKES! Chris wants to change his room to a room away from the street for his “writing”.

 

He will be given a room at the back. It seems to be 12: 45 PM.

 

 Chris asks the hotel manager to lock him in his room. WHAT HOTEL CAN LOCK SOMEONE IN? This seems to mimic a very similar scene from ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN when Lon Chaney’s Larry Talbot asks Lou Costello’s Wilber Gray to lock him in.

 

 

 

Chris tells the hotel manager to lock him in and not open the door if he hears noises. He acts out the scenes when he is writing, he claims. The hotel manager (Mr Wells?) says, “I’m…a…I’m afraid I… I don’t understand.”

 

And of course it was done better in the older movie but for comedic/horror effect. As Chris is locked in, there is a jump in takes. He goes to the window hoping this will work…and in blurry far away shot, I wonder if I’m seeing his hands hairy?

 

 

Blair lies to Maggie who is in a blue-ish wedding dress. Maggie, “Nicholas, I don’t understand.”  “Understand?”  “Well, where’s the minister ---why isn’t he here?”

 

He tells her a minister will be here very shortly. It seems to be 9pm. He drugs her champagne. The floor board squeaks. She feels so confused. Maggie says, “I don’t know,” and passes out which practically sums up Maggie’s entire time in the series. The music here feels NEW for the first time in a long time though maybe it is not.

 

Chris’s transformation is truly awful. The stupid hotel manager knocks on the door, opens it and encounters a growling unseen (to us) “thing” and he seems to scream without sound, then screams and falls. We do not yet see the wolf man.

 

Blair has Maggie on the altar. As he says the word bride, we hear a slight bang. He wants her to be his bride throughout time.

 

The hotel manager’s bloody body is dragged away. His eyes have blood on them. I give the actor kudos having liquid on his eyes. There is also blue lines. What’s that supposed to be? I don’t want to think about it. 

 

Amid a room with many, many candles and what looks like gates on both sides of him, Blair goes on about the owl, the raven, the bat…how their blood is in the chalice and he anoints Maggie with it. He looks at the camera, sort of as he says, “You will dwell with me forever in the land of the dead. You will live as I live, as one of the damned. Your spirit has united with mine.”  Past tense: so is she one with him already? Does he do that now? Does it work? We hear screams. He drinks from the chalice…is he drinking the blood of the owl, raven and bat? Ewl. He then kisses her after drinking of it. Ewl again.

 

What happened to Barnabas’s promise to Vicki? Hasn’t he checked on Maggie at all?

 

The credits zoom in and out. They are over the hotel room Chris wrecked as the unseen wolf man.

 

Review: Poor Maggie. Poor us for having to sit through this. I had to delete my comments about Don as Chris. I can’t be mean to him. Amy looks set to be another annoyance and another annoying character although her disturbing scene here is …well played by her. I’ve had enough of Blair to be honest and want to see him go.

Not sure I feel that way now but his scene here with Maggie and the wolf scene with the death of the hotel manager is …disturbing at best.

 

 

 It is time for a change but if we have to sit through Chris and Amy for another 60 episodes….Conrad Bain exits the series…some 550 episodes later or so… and he wasn’t in that many anyway…Blair’s motives are odd now…as if the writers did not know how to deal with the Maggie/Blair thing. He didn’t want to use his powers earlier but now he seems to have her completely under his control, drugs her and…puts animal blood on her and will commit her to the damned, to be one of the damned, use her as the life force and have her die so he and she can be together. Okay?

 

 

 

633/634

Grayson. It is night that many feel will never end. Who will be alive and who will not at its end? Blair has done the first ritual.

 

Reprise is similar but different. Different shots. No candle or “gates” look. There is now ONE candelabra that is big. His eyes are wider. Different inflection. Strange and different music. music. Clunk at end.

 

KLS must be given some credit for lying there and not laughing, no eye fluttering, no movement of any kind. Surely most of us could not do that.

 

We see Eve laying here for this episode doing nothing. As we see Julia and Barnabas, in the lab lens we see someone or something moving around. Julia comments on “poor motherless Eve. There’s a poem about that.”  It is a poem by Ralph Hodgson.    

 

Blair comes down to them, “Good evening.”  He also says, “Why are my conspirators, so reluctant.”

 

 

Barnabas and he spar. Barnabas tells him, “You seem to specialize in second chances.” Blair flubs over his word dispose when he tells Barnabas he did as he said and disposed of Tom Jennings. Barnabas tells Blair he destroyed Tom Jennings.

 

 

There is a glare on Blair. Blair seems to have wanted Tom to continue to live. He warns Barnabas not to forget what he was.

 

Julia intervenes in their verbal sparing and Blair tells her she is right and that personality differences have no place here and now.

 

Blair has a flub when he almost says “Depose” instead of something else. Adam comes in.

 

Then Maggie, who’s name Julia gasps. Barnabas protests, “I promised Vicki!”  Maggie and Adam vs Barnabas, not to mention Blair vs Barnabas.

 

Blair puts his middle finger on Adam’s chest! No he really does. He starts to make Adam’s heart beat faster in order to make Barnabas come under the same spell and his will.

 

Julia protests and asks Maggie to stop him but she is not herself and it is Maggie vs Julia. Julia agrees. Blair makes Adam lie down and go to sleep in a side room.

 

Three more words from Blair and Adam will stop breathing forever. Barnabas and Julia have no choice but to go through with this. Maggie calls Eve beautiful. She also says of herself, “There are so many things I have not known before tonight.” Blair kisses her on the table.

 

Nicholas will be sure Maggie can see him at all times, even when she will go unconscious as Julia explains. Oddly, and it’s difficult to tell but when Nicholas first came down the steps, he either took his left hand glove off or had it off already and he remains with only his right hand glove on for the entire scene in the cellar.

 

As the procedure starts, we hear rare music not used often and/or new music. It’s very “horror Universal”.

 

As Barnabas helps in the experiment, he remembers his promise to Vicki and the words of Maggie and Nicholas. Julia asks him about what a gauge reads and her voice is funny as she says, “NOW?”   Maggie is in pain. Her ranting is…strange to say the least. At one point, she says, “I die.”  Eve’s arm moves.

 

Barnabas yells and he cannot do this. “NO! I won’t go through with it! NOOO!” He starts to smash the equipment.

 

Blair raises his hands at Barnabas and it’s unclear if his power seems to start to stop Barnabas or not. Or if some of this power smashes some equipment but either way, soon the Master has deserted Blair and Blair has no power.

 

He runs into Adam’s room and tries to choke him. Barnabas stops him and he and Julia pull Blair away. Blair breaks free and runs out of the house.

 

Eve has been turned  into a skeleton…with a wig on it.

 

Barnabas chases Blair outside. Adam is ranting that he is now alone. He seems completely depressed and self centered. Julia revives Maggie…

 

Maggie who does not know who Julia is, ‘Who are you? Who am I?”  Sigh. Julia takes Maggie upstairs. Isn’t Julia even the little bit concerned about what Adam, the killer might do? Barnabas too? Isn’t he worried about Adam?

 

Adam is confused about who hates him, Nicholas or Barnabas and who to blame. He seems fixated on Barnabas hating him and him hating Barnabas. Robert is very good here. But Adam is still a self indulgent child who cares only about himself.

 

Julia tries to revive Maggie’s memory, what a switch from yesteryear. “Now, this room. You’ve been here so often.” 

 

She has…at least that you want her to remember? She plays Josette’s music box and tells her she’s heard it so often. Is this DS being ironic?

 

NOTE: This makes me wonder if the writers were planning on making Eve inhabit Maggie’s body!?

 

A new storm starts. Blair, on Widow’s Hill, pleads with his master not to destroy or take him. He still has on one glove (on his right hand) and no glove on his left hand.

 

Time means nothing to his master so Nicholas asks for 7 more days. Barnabas watches him plead but fire engulfs Blair and he screams and vanishes in the fire/light.

 

Barnabas is smiling in glee and his teeth show.

 

THIS REMINDS ME OF SOMETHING: Barnabas has not been a vampire FOR A VERY LONG TIME in the series, possibly less time as a vampire overall than as a human!???

 

In a scary sequence, Adam sneaks into Collinwood and stalks up the steps…

 

The credits have a white line.

 

Review: DS in “wrap up storyline” mode. And quite entertaining. Bye bye Nicholas. You served the series well but it was time for a new story to being.

 

Bye bye Eve. You were underused. Can Adam be far behind? And then we will be left with…Chris and Amy??? Yeek! Maggie is yet again the victim. Not sure if the writers were struggling with making Maggie a villainess or what. Her scenes seem…unsteady of plot to be honest and yet surprising and shocking that they would go there.

 

Of course it will be reversed soon enough. It also occurs to me that I never fully saw this episode. I only saw the last part as Blair is faded away in the “fire” effect. A good way for this to end I guess. Seeing Blair desperate and upset and physical is …satisfying after all the stuff he had done. But honestly…who did he kill? Angelique? Tom?