“He heard the pearl-shaped voice of a ghost saying Boo.”
The storyline this week is that young David’s trapped in the secret room in the mausoleum, and he can’t figure out how to open the hidden door from the inside. It’s a fairly suspense-free scenario, because he’s friends with a ghost who knows that he’s in there.
So it doesn’t take a genius to predict that Sarah will show up to rescue him, at some point between now and the day he starves to death. For the sake of convenience, let’s call that point “Friday.”
And yet, here we are, smack in the middle of Wednesday, with no end in sight. On the plus side, we get to spend some time with Joe this week, so that’s something.
I haven’t paid much attention to Joe so far, and I’m not sure why, because he’s lovely, and all of a sudden I have a crush on him. Look at him, he’s gorgeous. Tall, handsome, broad shoulders, deep voice, secretly gay. He even knows all of his lines. He’s basically perfect.
So I’m not sure why this is only occurring to me today. It might be the jacket. Last week, we saw him in a shapeless aquamarine turtleneck that didn’t really do much for him. The next day, he had a greenish jacket on, and a new haircut that was too short and made him look like a dork.
Today, he’s rocking a new jacket with horizontal stripes, and he’s got it zipped up halfway, which accentuates the shoulders. He’s got a brown sweater under it, and the haircut’s grown out nicely.
Plus, he’s got kind of a take-charge attitude today — he basically spends the whole episode leading Roger around as they search for David. As usual, Roger is all wry, queeny sarcasm, which makes Joe look masculine and commanding. Or maybe it’s just the jacket. I don’t know.
And David’s dying, by the way. Or maybe he’s just tired. It’s hard to say. Today’s script calls for him to alternate between two modes — he’s either pounding on the walls and screaming for help, or he’s unconscious. His internal clock appears to run entirely on dramatic irony.
Oh, and there’s more Chromakey today, and it looks good this time! This is the third episode where they’ve used a bluescreen effect to pretend that they’re filming outdoors, and they’re getting better at it.
The first time, two weeks ago, was just a nightmare, with shadows creating weird blue lines all over the place. Their second try a few days later was an improvement, but there was still too much going on.
Today, they try Chromakey on two different shots — first, with Roger and Joe standing on a hill looking over the countryside, and then another shot as they get to the Eagle Hill cemetery. The hill shot, which you can see here, is pretty nice; the cemetery scene gets a little dicey.
It looks like the key is to put the actors in front of the bluescreen, without throwing in a lot of extraneous foliage. The problem with the other shots is that they keep trying to throw plastic shrubbery in there too, both in front of the actors and behind them. They can’t light all those different levels correctly, so they get blue lines around the edges.
I’d be happy to go on telling you more of my theories about the history and practices of early Chromakey technology, but by now I’m sure you’re slumped against the wall like David in his “down” phase, so let’s move on.
And now we come to the best part of the episode. The caretaker’s back!
This is the crazy old caretaker of the Eagle Hill cemetery, whose job appears to be to walk around and tap on gravestones, to make sure that they’re still there. Then every once in a while he notices that someone’s disturbed the dead, and he gets kind of upset about it.
The last time we saw the caretaker, it was the second day of the blog, and I was kind of stressed and uptight about him. Five months and a hundred episodes later, it feels like seeing an old friend again. Basically, he’s not Burke, and that’s good enough for me.
The caretaker is extra loopy today; I think he’s aware that the show has a regular ghost character, and if he wants to compete, then he needs to up his game.
He sees that the mausoleum gate is open, so he pokes his head in, and calls, “Is anybody in there?”
David hears him, and starts pounding on the wall, shouting, “Help! Help!”
The caretaker’s reaction is perfect. He stares around the apparently empty crypt, and cries, “No… no! There’s no help for you! No help is possible! You must rest. Rest!”
So he locks the gate, and backs away, ignoring David’s muffled cries. It’s fantastic. That’s why we have a caretaker, for top-shelf crazy like that.
The episode goes on, but really nothing gets accomplished; it’s another Sproatnapping “close call” episode.
Roger and Joe chat with the caretaker about the dead for a while, and then they take a look in the mausoleum. By the time they get there, David’s sound asleep again, and then he wakes up five seconds after they leave.
So there’s no plot development today, just some fun things to look at and listen to. Every once in a while, that’s enough.
Tomorrow: A Logical Explanation.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
This episode has one of the all-time great dialogue bloopers, which Roger handles beautifully:
Joe: Shall we go?
Roger: Oh… wait a minute.
Joe: What’s the matter?
Roger: Several of my incestors — incestors? — my ancestors are buried here.
There’s also an odd bit of fuzzy geography when Joe and Roger are standing on a hill and looking around. Joe says that they’re on “the highest point of land for miles around.” Then he points, and asks, “What’s that down there?” Roger says, “Oh, that’s the Eagle Hill cemetery.” This raises a question: If it’s called Eagle Hill cemetery, why isn’t it up on the hill?
Finally, that’s Roger’s line quoted at the top. I’m pretty sure that the line as written was “He heard the pear-shaped voice of a ghost saying Boo,” not “pearl-shaped”. But that’s what happens when you read your lines off the teleprompter.
Tomorrow: A Logical Explanation.
Dark Shadows episode guide – 1967
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
My favorite line of the episode is when Roger says to Joe, “I’ve gone this far with you. I may as well go all the way.”
Roger should know about incestors, having sired David with his own grandmother, Laura, the mother of Jamison, Roger and Liz’s father!! Eww! Only on DS!!
“,,, all of a sudden I have a crush on him.” Usually we hear about these things in media res; but there’s nothing like that moment of “when I first discovered him.” That’s one of the things I’m really liking about this blog, Dan… you share.
why did david hide, anyways? he heard willie and barnabas coming – there is no reason he would hide from them. am i missing something?
Agree with you Danny about Joel Crothers’ handsome good looks, broad shoulders, deep manly voice, etc.. He was always visually appealing, but in today’s episode, and tomorrow’s, he is suddenly off-the-charts gorgeous. The scene tomorrow, where he’s slumped in the chair at Maggie’s house, unshaven and exhausted, he just takes your breath away.
I think The Caretaker is officially my New Favorite Character. He’s bat-sheet crazy, and I love how the show makes no effort at all to explain him.
I love the caretaker too. LET THEM REST!
For some reason I always think of the character Peter Parker when Joe shows up. I have no idea why.
Roger mentions that Eagle Hill is the most desolate of all the cemeteries in the area. How many cemeteries (desolate, cheerful, or in between) are in the area?
You know, if that ding-dang caretaker had been doing his job, he’d have shooed David away yesterday, and we could have avoided all this nonsense!
They may be better at ChromaKey, but it needs a lot of work still.
Love that Roger is actually OUT SEARCHING FOR HIS ONLY SON, and yet is still constantly willing to quit immediately, and dismiss the caretaker’s story about cries for help, and generally be a wet blanket (though a wryly witty one). And he doesn’t want to go into the family crypt, then once they’re inside, he starts sightseeing?
Right there with you about Joe! Been eyeing him since the color shows started. Don’t you just want to tousle that hair? (And maybe a few other things…) Gotta get over to Ohrbach’s and see if they have any more of those flannel shirts in attractive fall colours.
You must rest! Like they have the flu. LOL.
I love how roger comes home to all the excitement of his 9 year old out at night, when there are steep cliffs, rocks and crashing surf, a mad man on the loose and if it’s Maine, probably bears in the woods and look how non plussed he seems. Like to hell with everything i need scotch and a hot shower, to hell with David he’s a pain in the ass any way . Roger is great .
…lol…David is a pain in the ass. He needs his ass kicked too for being too freaking nosy and asking to many damn questions!
I dunno…Roger seemed pretty upset to me when he found out David was missing.
Mr. Danny Horn, I fracking LOVE your site! It’s SO damn pee-in-your-pants funny! I haven’t laughed so hard at critical analysis of a TV show since Phil Farrand’s Nitpickers Guides for Star Trek fans. I have all but the last 240 or so DS eps (getting those soon), seen up to ep700 or so.
I had turned age 4 less than a month before Dark Shadows premiered. I won’t bore you with the incremental history of my DS viewing.
But I’d like your thoughts on a suspicion of mine. Back when Mitch Ryan was fired you said his dialogue for that day’s shooting was rewritten for Joe. That was quite a while ago and I mean this not necessarily for this episode, but since then I’ve wondered if at least some of this search-for-Sarah traipsing about might have been planned for the Burke-investigating-Barnabus bust. It makes sense Joe would be doing some of this because he and Maggie are a thing (a thing they don’t show romantically very often at all anymore). My first inkling came when Joe accompanies Sam to Collinwood to ask David about Sarah. That seems like something old-Burke would do. There’s a recurring thread of Sam/Burke connections right up to Mitch Ryan’s last scene with Dr. Woodard’s “microphone” – the can’t-you-give-me-something-for-Sam hoo-haw. Sure, Maggie was missing back then, but their hanging together was clearly established through all that. Unless I’m misremembering, there was little if any one-on-one interaction between them since. Other than that full-episode in The Blue Whale (which I deleted entirely from my collection), I can’t recall those two appearing in the same scene since.
What do you think?
I don’t think any of this searching would have planned for Mitch Ryan Burke. The writers really didn’t work that far ahead.
In Louis’s defence, “pear-shaped voice” makes about as much sense as the line he actually said…
The Caretaker is my 2nd favorite character. I love the guy! Is there earlier episode descriptions here that feature him?
I’ve always thought Joe was dreamy. And Mitch Ryan . . . swoon I so wish he was still on the show. I wouldn’t mind watching love scenes between him and Vickie, or any other scene, really.
I do appreciate that at least Roger shows up and reads Vicki the riot act. He really should consider firing her over this.
The truly superb “save” by Roger when he blows the line, and then corrects it, is TV magic at its best. He even gives a kind of sardonic half-smile when he gets to the end of the line, as if he knows he fucked up, but it’s now going to air that way.
Can you imagine what anyone would have thought back then if they knew that we would have the ability to watch (and re-watch) their work over 50 years later in painstaking detail and freeze-frame? It must have been a bummer to not even get to see your own work on TV if you were too busy actually making the show when it was airing.
TD, I couldn’t agree with you more on “I have come this far with you. I might as well go all the way.” I guffawed at that one and actually was predicting it would be Danny’s opening quote line for the day but the “pearl-shaped voice” line certainly is a collectible as well.
I also wanted to comment on the Return of the Caretaker. It would seem that with him coming in as a guest star for the episode that the actor count for the show comes to six. Isn’t that a pretty high number for DS? Or is it 7 that’s the rare number due to the budget?
I love how Elizabeth is “still in Boston” with no further explanation being offered than that. Again, with her being such a recluse for almost 20 years, she is really making up for lost time.
Finally, really digging all of the fan love from Danny and others on Joel Crothers. Being from Cincinnati myself, which is where Joel hailed from, and watching his EDGE OF NIGHT years as a young lad, my crush pre-dates probably everyone here. He was a solid classic actor who really turned in great performances in whatever he did. It is such a tragedy that he was one of the first actors lost from the scourge of AIDS when it swept through New York in the mid-80’s initially and an entire generation of actors/artists and talent was lost forever.
I had the pleasure of seeing him as Harvey Fierstein’s lover in the Broadway premiere of TORCH SONG TRILOGY in my first ever junket to New York to see a week of Broadway plays. He was awesome in that and the show was really ground-breaking as Joel’s character was Harvey’s bisexual lover which was pretty progressive stuff for the New York stage at the time.
I remember hearing of his passing at the young age of 44 and thinking what an unbelievable sadness it must have been for all that knew him and worked with him.
As noted above, after his initial snit at Vicki old Rog is awfully blase about the whole David-is-missing thing. By the end of the episode he seems downright amused.
They make a stab at getting the timeline right, stating that David went missing between 7 and 8 the previous evening. This makes more sense than the screwy scenario they laid out yesterday.
Although my admiration for Joel Crothers isn’t quite as, uh, personal as some of the other commenters, it is good to see him getting a featured part after being absent for so long.
Did David just come from a rehearsal of Oliver? So many smudges on his face! It’s like he’s about to break out into a chorus of “Food, Glorious Food” and ask for more gruel.
And after all this discussion of Joel Crothers’ charms and Roger saying, “I might as well go all the way,” I’m getting some pretty strong visuals.
You must rest! REST! REST!!
This is one of my favorite episodes. Not because it’s worth a crap acting or plot-wise, but because of Louis Edmonds’ priceless dialogue gaffe, and his flawless recovery. I have seen this two dozen times, and I laugh out loud every time, still. He’s a kick in the pants, and I just love me some stern, grouchy, snobby Louis. He liked to pull pranks on set, making it difficult for the others to concentrate. Such a cad.
Yes, “I might as well go all the way” is pure gold.
I sympathize with David’s inconvenient sleep schedule. Mine has me awake in the wee hours of the morning which at least allows me to watch DS reruns on Decades. This plotline with Barnabas threatening David is not my favorite but I can appreciate how very good at being evil Frid is, especially in his conversations with Julia. I truly believe that he barely tolerates her.
This really isn’t a new coat for Joe. It’s the same one he was wearing in episode 308 (though it looks duller there, but I think that has more to do with the lighting and/or color in that particular taping). I believe Joe has had this coat for quite some time. (Glad you noticed it today, though!) And 308 was taped only eight days before this one, so I’m not too sure about his hair growing out much since then–honestly, it looks about the same to me in terms of length. Maybe it’s the styling in today’s episode.
The cemetery caretaker appears a number of times in the pre-Barnabas Phoenix story line, so he doesn’t come out of nowhere quite as seems to be the case in the episode. But it has been quite a long time since he’s been on, and yes, he’s looney tunes. But if you’re a fan of old “Let Them Rest” and haven’t watched the Phoenix story line, I’d recommend seeking him out there.