Monthly Archives: January 2017

Episode 986: Down in the Science Dungeon

April 1970, Joe Caldwell, , , , , ,

“Why? Why alter a human being?”

“Let me begin,” the doctor says, “by saying that man is chemical in his composition.” Oh boy, here we go.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the simpering Dr. Cyrus Longworth: a man, a plan, an apparatus. That’s him back there, behind the equipment, workshopping his defense attorney’s closing arguments.

We’re in another weird basement science dungeon today, one of those makeshift conceptual sets made of equal parts brick, stone and middle school classroom. There are wire cages holding a rabbit and a guinea pig, quietly munching on carrots and wondering why they ever got into show business. The apparatus isn’t bubbling and nobody’s having their head removed yet, but give them time; they’re just getting started.

But I’m interrupting Dr. Longworth, who has a theory to expound that you may find difficult to swallow. Still, people used to believe that the sun was flat.

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Episode 985: The Cassandra Complex

April 1970, Violet Welles, , , , ,

“Twins usually do resemble each other, or haven’t you heard?”

Except it’s not Angelique, obviously. How could it be? She’s dead, probably.

Although Angeliques do have a habit of making post-mortem comebacks; they’re a tenacious people. It doesn’t matter how often you strangle them, exorcise them, shoot them in the shoulder, set them on fire, burn their portraits, or dump buckets of water over them and dissolve them into a well-dressed puddle. They always return, with fresh schemes. What a world, what a world!

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Episode 984: What We Know

April 1970, Gordon Russell, ,

“How can I fight a presence?”

Angelique was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. Actually, there is some doubt about it, so I guess the story is, like, eighty-five percent wonderful.

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Episode 983: The Terror of Tarrytown

April 1970, Gordon Russell, , , , , , , ,

“She said Collinwood was like a perfect clock.”

And they’re off, out the door and down the path and away to Tarrytown, New York, to film House of Dark Shadows, an unwise reprise which revisits the past and destroys the future.

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Episode 982: Bad Marriages

March 1970, Sam Hall,

“I’m in an unfamiliar time, without a touchstone.”

It’s narrative collision time on Dark Shadows, as a brand-new storyline begins, using brand-new second-hand stories. By now, the Dark Shadows writers have fully acclimated to the idea that this is how you write a soap opera, throwing together bits and pieces of other people’s stories, and when the end comes, as it will, they’ll spend the next several decades patiently explaining that they couldn’t continue writing the show, because they’d run out of source material to plunder. They believe it, too. This is all they know.

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Episode 981: The Clone Wars

March 1970, Sam Hall, , , , , ,

“You see, I came to this time hoping desperately to escape what I am.”

And now it’s this! Hooray! The dreadful Leviathans are now and evermore squeegeed from our lives, scrubbed from the world and leaving only the laundry-fresh scent of pine, because here in soapland, there’s nothing that can’t be fixed by a good all-temperature detergent.

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Episode 980: Next Stop Keystone City

Gordon Russell, March 1970, , , , , , , ,

“Trying to transcend that other time level can be very dangerous!”

Eccentric mass murderer and explorer of the outer realms Barnabas Collins is pacing the Collinwood drawing room, frowning heroically and making excuses. He’s been having one of his spells again.

His friend Julia takes a lap around the track. “Barnabas, why did you do it?” she wails. Barnabas drank Megan dry a few weeks ago, and now he’s about three-quarters of the way through Sabrina.

“I stayed at the Old House, and fought the urge to leave,” he says, striking an apologetic pose. “And then she came to me.”

“You couldn’t help yourself,” Julia observes.

Barnabas swivels, and snaps, “Do you think I do this by choice?”

“No, Barnabas,” she reassures him. “I know what you’re going through.” Yeah, he’s going through the entire female supporting cast, is what he’s going through.

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Episode 979: Jeb Hawkes Must Die

March 1970, Sam Hall, , , , ,

“I’m leaving! I’m going where the action is!”

Hey, guess what, we’re still killing Jeb Hawkes. It’s been three weeks since the royal teen rebel smashed his box and exploded the Leviathan altar, and two weeks since Angelique tagged him with a wiggling shadow of imminent demise, and one week since I really seriously stopped caring about what happens to Jeb Hawkes.

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Episode 978: What’s Cooking

March 1970, Sam Hall, , , , , ,

“Aren’t you about to be recommitted to the underworld?”

So it turns out Julia can’t cure vampirism after all, just like she can’t cure lycanthropy or Frankenstein Syndrome or acute-onset Creature of the Black Lagoonism. I’m afraid that universal health care for Universal Monsters is still just a dream.

Now Barnabas is reacting to her anti-vamp treatments by becoming even more of a vampire than he was in the first place, which puts the kibosh on the Nobel Prize for sure. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences does not want to hear your excuses. They want results.

And sadly, the result here is that we had Megan as the sleepy co-dependent vampire blood slave a couple weeks ago, and now we’ve got Sabrina in the same role, which means I’m supposed to watch Sabrina urging Barnabas to drink her blood, and consider that entertainment. Well, I’m not having it. The show has refused to provide me with a single reason to like Sabrina, and if she wants to die from blood loss and neck trauma, then she should go and do it on her own time. This window is closed.

So instead of watching that, let’s go — for the very last time, I’m afraid — and look at a new form of Dark Shadows merchandise.

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