DARK SHADOWS 639
dark shadows 639
639
“Dr. Hoffman, I could swear,
it was dressed like a man.”
“Oh, David, this is so
exciting.”
“David you were right.”
“Right about what?”
“The west wing is
haunted.”
“I think the man I’m talking
to…is a ghost.”
“What’s this ghost’s
name?”
“Quentin Collins.”
“I’ve never heard my father
talk about a Quentin Collins.”
Grayson. Collinwood stands in
majestic isolation under the brightness of…a full moon. A new and terrifying
evil that prowls the woods of the Collins’ estate.
A slightly different reprise.
New material before opening
titles and credit: Liz screams….badly and unlike Grayson’s screams, it’s not
even funny. The creature runs away. Liz is on a rock and sees Amy. It is weird
as if the show wants us to think she’s a ghost…or…the creature?
Then the theme and opening
credit.
The animal ran away when it
saw her. Wouldn’t you? Amy says as much. Liz says, “I…I don’t understand.” Liz asks why it ran away when it saw her.
Amy’s first IDK!
Amy thinks Collinwood is a
pretty house. Really? Maybe we should run away from her. “I wish I lived
there,” she says.
HALT: a thought occurred to
me: Has Quentin and/or Beth already possessed Amy before she arrives at the
West Wing? She sure acts strange in her first scenes and never really recovers.
The two leave and we hear
more growls. And see shaking trees. Liz tells Julia the animal was probably a
wolf but dressed like a man. Julia gets and later gives a sedative for Liz.
Flub: there is a crewmember
standing by Liz. Liz thanks Amy for saving her. “If it hadn’t been for you, IDK
what might have happened.”
Amy is not afraid of the
dark. A storm. Amy will stay tonight at Collinwood. David comes in and meets
Amy. He’s in his night robe. Liz sends David to tell Mrs. Johnson she wants to
see her (we do not). David asks Amy to go with him.
Liz tells Julia that the
sight of Amy frightened the creature away. We hear the howling of a dog that we
usually hear when a vampire is around.
David and Amy in her room (which
has a roaring fireplace) look at shells he has collected. David tells her, “I
hardly ever have to go to bed early.”
Amy opens the window to watch
the lightning. When Amy tells him she’s not afraid of lightning or thunder (and
he says lightning can strike you dead in typical David fashion), he moves to
leave for bed, seeing he’s not needed but she stops him and asks him to sit
with her and tell her about the house.
As they sit we see a camera
gliding across the floor above Amy. She asks how many rooms there are and David
admits he believes no body’s ever even counted the rooms. She thinks maybe 100.
When she asks him why no one has even counted the rooms, he says IDK.
I thought pre series info
said something like 400? I could be wrong. Or
David tells her about a whole
haunted wing: the West Wing. An early ep mentioned the East Wing, possibly a
flub by Bennett.
Early info on the series also
talks of an East Wing being closed off. He tells her it is haunted and has
ghosts. As David tells her they have to really careful because Aunt Elizabeth
will be really mad, we hear some sounds from behind the set or the door.
They leave for it and outside
in the hallway we see a long window from which we see lightning. THEN, in the
West Wing, we see another window.
Amy asks how long it has been
since anyone lived in this part of the house. David’s answer, “Oh, IDK, but
it’s been a real long time.”
In the West Wing, David shows
her a portrait of Thaddeus Collins, who was from the time of the Civil War.
They go to a storage room. Amy says, “This room must have lots of
secrets.”
David tells her “Nothing ever
happened to me in this room.”
Down the corridor, there is a room with a
secret passage that is his favorite room. Amy looks and points out an old
telephone. David wants to play a game. Amy suggests a pretend game and uses the
phone. David wants to pretend the room is the same as it is the same as when it
was open but Amy wants to pretend they can see the people who lived here. David
says, “IDK if my imagination’s that good.”
She suggests they talk to them on the telephone. David gets another IDK,
“But IDK who lived in this room.”
Amy, “David you were right.” “Right about what?” “The west wing is
haunted.” “I think the man I’m talking
to…is a ghost.” “What’s this ghost’s
name?” “Quentin Collins.”
She names Quentin Collins.
When David listens, not expecting any sound on the phone, a zoom in and close
up of his face, tells us he does hear something.
We do not hear a thing and
that makes it scarier. He hears breathing. David has a ring on. The phone’s
wire is not connected to anything.
David, later, comes to Amy’s
room where they have brought the phone. He has an album. She asks if they will
find him in there. David’s answer: IDK. “I’ve never heard my father talk about
a Quentin Collins.”
They look through a family
album that dates back to the Civil War. They find a picture of Quentin as a
boy.
“I wonder why his ghost is
haunting the West Wing?” Amy asked.
“IDK,” David says yet again.
Liz knocks. David hides
everything under Amy’s bed. Amy then lets her in, “Come in, miss.” What?
David will ask Aunt Elizabeth
about Quentin.
Liz tells him that Quentin
was her great uncle. He left here young and went to
Amy goes to the phone after
Liz and David leave, thinking she went to bed.
It is 2:15 am. Or becomes
that as she goes to sleep. Later, she wakes up and goes to the phone and starts
talking to someone on the other end. NOTE: This makes me wonder if the phone
was supposed to ring and wake her up, which would have been even more creepy
but perhaps censors deemed it too scary? It would have been scary if the ring
happened.
She tells him she will be
right there. She says, “Goodbye, Quentin.”
NOTE: outside her room in the
hall is a window and a chair near it.
Rain is on the window. Amy
takes off for the west wing. Approaching the main room’s door, she passes
a pink vase. She goes in, sees an old ship model and a picture frame, and turns
as if the door has shut but it hasn’t. WHY did she turn around? Also: in the
next ep, in the reprise which looks almost exactly the same but is not, next to
the model of the ship on a table or bureau, we see a deer head in webbing, too.
HERE, we do not see that. There, she
asks if Quentin is going to come out and see her.
Credits have no crew, only
cast.
David’s “HULLO? HULLO!”
strikes me funny but I guess it’s because I knew a family member that used to
do that when she got hang ups on the phone or the wrong number or a bad connection.
In any event, THIS is what
DS is for: a vulnerable, slightly obsessed or even possessed character made by
unearthly forces to wander around a creepy old house alone during a thunder and
lightning storm encountering…almost nothing but webs, antiques and unseen
forces like ghosts while creepy music plays and doors seem to close.
Is Amy manipulating David? Or
she is already possessed by Beth and/or Quentin?
David looking at the
fireplace and warming his hand over it…is striking for many reasons that never
seem to be followed through on, considering his mother was a phoenix. He briefly
pokes at it with a stick and then later throws it into the fire.
Christine: Amy is the perfect BFF for David! She's not only fearless, but totally cool with getting into mischief and playing creepy games. These two are sure to start all kinds of trouble and scare up more ghosts at Collinwood. I love the ghostly conversation on the antique telephone that makes me think of "Long Distance Call" from The Twilight Zone, and look forward to more talks with Quentin Collins.
Episode 639: Vampire Excites Wives, Young Set | Dark Shadows Every Day
Danny Horn's text for this ep is worth repeating :
So this is one of those magic episodes for me. I have a really clear memory of watching it for the first time — a woman walking through the dark woods, hearing the growl of an approaching animal, and oh my god, that’s Elizabeth from Dark Shadows, this is actually Dark Shadows.
I can’t tell you how excited I was. I could finally find out what happened to Dr. Woodard!
Just by chance, my re-entry into Collinsport happened to be the beginning of a brand new storyline. The show’s been offloading old characters and tying up loose ends for the last month, practically starting over — and the status quo that they’re returning to is exactly the show that I remembered from sixth grade.
Elizabeth and Roger, Carolyn and David, Barnabas and Julia and Willie, Maggie and Joe and Vicki — it was still the mysterious, haunted dreamscape from middle school.
And the interlopers who’d been cluttering up the place while I was gone — Angelique, Nicholas, Adam, Eve, Jeff — had all been tucked away, just in the last couple weeks, so it was super easy to catch up. It’s like they knew I was coming, which for all I know maybe they did.
To get this new phase of the show rolling, they’ve just introduced Amy Jennings, an obvious pander to the young set. This audience segment has been getting more attention lately, what with the board games and trading cards and Halloween costumes, but young David has been essentially benched for most of the year. His governess, Vicki, has been otherwise occupied — traveling through time, falling inexplicably in love, being kidnapped and hypnotized by practically everybody — so David’s just been drifting along in the background, more or less storyline-free.
But here comes Amy, the little sister of the Jennings twins, Tom and Chris. Tom is a vampire who was recently cooked to a crisp by the sunlight, and Chris is a werewolf who’s been making a bloody mess of passing hotel clerks.
She’s been living in the Windcliff Sanitarium for months, but you can’t keep Amy J. tied down for long. She just looks at you, and smiles, and makes for the exit.
Like I said, I had some older brother problems of my own back then; I knew what it’s like to have a brother who periodically turns into a monster. So I was happy to follow Amy as she broke out of the asylum, ran for her life, and found herself a new place to stay.
I mean, get a load of this kid. Every responsible adult in her life is dead, she’s homeless, she just walked for miles in a thunderstorm through a dark forest alive with mythical beasts, and just look at her. Unbothered.
David: Doesn’t lightning and thunder scare you?
Amy: No.
David: It does most girls.
Amy: It shouldn’t. It can’t hurt you.
She’s full of stuff like that. Girl is hardcore.
She’s only staying the night — tomorrow they’re going to send her back to the sanitarium — so she doesn’t waste any time. She sits down with David, and gets right to work.
Amy: Tell me all about this house. What’s it like to live here?
David: Oh, I guess it’s the same as any other place.
Amy: How could it be? It’s bigger than any house I’ve ever seen. It must have a hundred rooms!
Can you believe this girl? Yeah, we get it, you don’t have a place to live. I bet she planned this whole scenario, the scheming little baggage.
Amy is acting like the widest of wide-eyed innocents, but she is completely in control of this situation. She keeps saying things like, “I bet you’ve never even been to the West Wing.” and “I love exploring houses!” and “What’s in this room?” and before you know it, she’s invited herself along on a flashlight tour of the abandoned and almost certainly haunted wing of the house.
Once she’s maneuvered herself into the dusty storage room that she’s clearly been heading for this whole time, she reaches out a hand and grabs the instrument of summoning. It’s an antique telephone, the kind that you use if you want to talk to the dead.
I don’t know how Amy knew that telephone was here, or why she wants to harness its power, but she’s been making a beeline for that thing this whole episode. She walked all the way from Windcliff, just to get her hands on it.
You know what? I think she might be working for They, the dark and shadowy organization who forcibly removed Jeff from the series a couple of days ago. I haven’t figured out who They are yet, but this is just the kind of thing They’d arrange. This has They written all over it.
Observe the technique.
David: You want to make up a game? We could pretend that this room doesn’t have any of the junk in it. And that it’s the same as it was when the West Wing was still open.
Amy: And see the people who lived in it, too!
David: Well, I don’t know if my imagination’s that good.
Amy: Well… if we can’t see them, wouldn’t it be fun if we could talk to them?
David: How could we talk to them, if they weren’t here?
Amy: By telephone!
Amy: Let’s pretend, when we pick up that telephone, we’ll be able to talk to someone who lived in the past! Maybe in this very room!
David: But I don’t know who lived in this room.
Amy: You mean, you don’t want to play?
Honestly, it’s that easy. You could pretty much say anything, and boys will do whatever you want. Boys are stupid.
So she gets on the line, and makes a ghost-to-ghost call.
Amy: Hello? My name is Amy Jennings. What’s yours? That’s a nice name. Where do you live? Somewhere near this room? If David and I came looking for you, could we see you? Could you hold on for just a minute?
So that’s what we’re dealing with here — a girl who makes contact with the infinite, and then puts it on hold. Amy is a rock star.
She tells David that she’s talking to Quentin Collins. He says, “I’ve never heard of a Quentin Collins,” which is the very last time anybody in the United States ever said that sentence.
It’s They, I’m telling you. It usually is. Amy is an Agent of They.
So here we are, the two of us, young Amy Jennings and young Danny Horn — the young set. Two children, a little bit crazy, a little bit lost, both of us searching for a home called Collinwood.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
In act 1, right after Amy says, “Are you Mrs. Stoddard?”, they cut to a different camera, and we can see the silhouette of somebody’s head quickly ducking out of the frame. Right after this, there’s a bit of banging and walking around in the studio.
Julia asks Liz, “Can’t you think — of anything about the animal that attacked you?”
When David and Amy settle down in front of the fireplace, you can see the base of a camera roll by behind them, at the top right of the screen.
Behind the Scenes:
Quentin’s name is partly inspired by Peter Quint, one of the sinister ghosts from Henry James’ 1898 novel The Turn of the Screw. We’ll probably talk some more about this novel at some point.
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