“Gee, I wish she wasn’t scared of me.”
Well, Adam’s still locked in the prison cell in the Old House basement, so we are too, I guess. This is one of those slow Thursdays where they’ve got something exciting figured out for the end of the week, and there’s nothing much to do until then.
But we’ve got a secret back door today. We’re going on one more uncertain and frightening journey into the past, back to 1845 and the strange origins of vampire fiction.
“A man — No! He was a monster! A monster!”
You know that you’re in for a good day on Dark Shadows when the episode opens with everybody who has a speaking part all standing in a line and facing the teleprompter.
That means two things: there are four people on a cramped set that can really only accommodate one and a half, and the actors can’t memorize their lines because the things that they’re supposed to say don’t mean anything. In other words, it’s a Ron Sproat script today.
“Whether he’s ordinary or not is not the point. He’s a living human being, and we are responsible for him.”
It’s one of those weird nitpicks that people like to bring up in conversation — that “Frankenstein” isn’t the name of the monster; it’s the name of the doctor who created him. Then you say, okay, so what’s the monster’s name? And then everyone just stands around and looks foolish, until finally somebody says, gee, will you look at the time.
Because the creature doesn’t really have a name — he’s billed as the Monster in the Boris Karloff movie, and sometimes people will say “Frankenstein’s monster,” but those aren’t satisfying names, and everybody knows it.
The name “Frankenstein” exists in this weird middle space, suspended between creator and creation. And when you think about it, they’re kind of the same thing anyway, aren’t they? The doctor is the one who thinks; the monster is the one who acts. It’s the ego and the id. “Frankenstein’s monster” and “a Frankenstein monster” are both true, at the same time.
So, this big guy who’s currently smashing up the laboratory — is he Barnabas’ monster? Or is this a Barnabas monster?
Dark Shadows Every Day 