“How are we gonna explain carrying a coffin around?”
It’s got a wobbly, unmarked styrofoam gravestone. It’s got spooky stairs leading down to a story-productive secret passageway. It’s got a mystery box, containing a headless corpse and a gold mask studded with improbable jewels. It’s got the great visual hook of an eight-foot wooden cross, pinning down a forbidden coffin lid. It’s even got a hapless 1840 equivalent of Willie Loomis, unwittingly unboxing an evil from the past. This should be right up my street. So why am I so unhappy?
Well, for one thing, they keep blasting Dead of Night music at me. Dead of Night, if you’re not up to date on your 1969 failed TV pilots, was executive producer Dan Curtis’ 1969 failed TV pilot for a night-time series about a co-ed trio of professional ghost-botherers, which he shot on videotape, using the same production values as his cheap live-to-tape afternoon soap opera. It didn’t work out.
Bob Cobert did the music for the Dead of Night pilot, which mostly recycled his music cues from Dark Shadows. But Dan splashed out on one exciting new track, an opening theme that pushes the moody orchestration of Cobert’s usual work to a nerve-jangling new horizon.
If you’ve got the Complete Dark Shadows Soundtrack Music Collection, which you probably haven’t, this is music cue 316: “Head Music, Dead of Night theme”. They’ve been leaning on this track heavily for the past few weeks, and it’s making me contemplate suicide more often than I’m accustomed to.
The Dead of Night theme begins with a big splattery wet fart of a trumpet lick, which returns every twenty seconds or so, just to make sure you can’t get comfortable. There’s a constant nervous violin wobble, rising and falling in unpredictable patterns. Every once in a while, you hit a patch of Dark Shadowsy woodwinds, but then it gets lost behind jangly windchimes and a startlingly loud high-pitched whine from some instrument that I actually can’t identify. It’s carrying the main tune of the song, if you can call it that, but it only carries it for six notes before giving up, and letting the trumpet splatter and grumbling violins take over again. Then the tune starts over again, rising to a crescendo that never arrives, while someone runs a mallet back and forth over the vibraphone and the trumpet lets out one long blatatatatat.
It’s terrible, the world’s worst one minute and five seconds of music. It’s specifically designed to make you anxious and unhappy, which would be fine if it were played as it was intended, as the one-minute signature tune for a television pilot about to fall into instant obscurity. But instead, they play it twice in a row, for a minute and forty-five seconds straight, and then there’s the Dark Shadows theme, and then we go back to the show and they start the Dead of Night music over again for another minute and twenty seconds.
This is the aural equivalent of nerve gas, an area denial weapon that sends a clear signal to the audience that you should turn off the television and go do your homework.
And where is this supposed to be, anyway? It’s a weird underground basement storage room hidden underneath a graveyard, which is impossible. You need a bit of space downstairs in order to build a basement, and in a graveyard, “downstairs” is full of other people’s moldering caskets. You can’t really stretch out down there without running into somebody’s mortal remains. I suppose it’s possible that all the gravestones up at ground level are an elaborate false flag operation, but that seems like a lot of work and people would probably notice.
As I said, the enormous wooden cross is a nice visual hook for the space, although I’m not sure whether it’s supposed to be a bug or a feature. It looks like it crashed down from somewhere, but there’s no structure that it could have fallen out of. The overall sense is that this cross was intentionally wedged into this space, in order to stop Desmond from doing what he’s doing.
Desmond is here because he’s under the sway of a mystical severed head that lives in a glass case in his drawing room. The head wants Desmond to dig up its severed body, just for old time’s sake. He can’t be planning to do anything in particular with it, because it’s been dead for 148 years and is probably just a mess of bones and gristle at this point. Also, there’s a gold Inca mask in there.
I challenge any living person to explain the significance of the Inca mask. It’s sealed up in its own little compartment, which is easily accessed by simply flicking the cover off with your fingernail. It is apparently made of gold, and there are jewel-like stones covering most of the surface area, and also it’s got eyelashes.
Now, the actual head isn’t underneath the mask, because it’s in Desmond’s living room, so presumably the mask was left here in place of the head by the people who built this basement and wedged a giant cross over the coffin, for unknown reasons. I have no further information about the mask.
So I don’t know, maybe it’s the Dead of Night music, but I’m having a hard time figuring out what the producers of this television show are trying to convey. It feels to me like the mask is a failed bit of narrative collision, where they couldn’t think of another story to collide into, so they decided to grab a prop from an Uncle Scrooge comic book and hope that it means something.
Another reason why I’m not feeling super inspired by this plotline is that we don’t really know Desmond all that well. He’s a Collins cousin who lives in a nearby mansion with his mother, and brought the mystical severed head back from Macau to give to his best friend, Quentin. That is literally all of the information that exists about Desmond. We don’t know what he does for a living, or what he was doing in Macau.
But here’s one clue: he knows a drunk sailor named Tim who apparently beats people up for money. Desmond slips the guy a gold coin and says he has to come help with something, and when Tim asks what, he says don’t worry about it, just come with me and don’t ask any questions. This is what TaskRabbit used to be like.
When they get to the cemetery, Tim’s figured out that there might be something weird going on. “Listen,” he objects, “maybe this ain’t a good idea.”
Desmond stares him down. “You’re not scared, are ya, Tim?”
“You won’t tell me what you’re doing!” Tim says. “This ain’t like you, Desmond.”
Desmond grins. “I’ve changed, Tim.”
But has he? So far, almost all of the Desmond scenes that we’ve seen involve the head hypnotizing him, and making him angry and cruel, but for all we know, that’s what he’s like in the first place. When he approaches Tim in the bar and shows him the coin, Tim says, “You want somebody beat up, is that it?” Maybe that’s a thing that Desmond tells people to do. What was he doing in Macau, and how did he know where to buy a severed head?
So that’s how things go, these days. Dark Shadows used to give you a couple days to actually know who the characters were, before they started in on the grave-robbing and henchman-hiring.
Think about Count Petofi and Aristede, Jeb and Bruno, Parallel Angelique and Hannah, Nicholas Blair and his rotating gallery of sidekicks. They all had their problems as characters, but there’s a noticeable difference with Judah Zachery and Desmond.
The other villains were all characters, with at least partly-recognizable motivations; they walked around in the world, and charmed people. They’d make a joke once in a while. The show invested time and energy in making the audience interested in the bad guys.
But the head is just a head. We’ve seen him open his eyes a couple times, and he said a few sentences to Desmond in a dream, but really it’s just a force of pure, unfocused anger.
Last week, Desmond — speaking on behalf of the head — shouted, “I kept telling them! Death was an extension of life! I kept telling them that!” But who was the “them” that Judah was telling, and how does that “them” relate to the four people he killed in Bedford, or the prospective people he’s planning to kill now?
So, sure, go ahead and kill Tim, if it makes you feel any better, but I don’t really understand what’s going on. Tim is tempted to steal the priceless Inca mask and forget the whole excavation, and the headless body gets up from under the cross and kills him and then walks away, leaving the mask behind, because I guess the mask didn’t really have a lot to do with anything anyway.
And here it comes, the extremely stoppable menace, stumbling into the night in search of eyes and a central nervous system. The mystery box opens once again, and disgorges another ancient evil, bent on the destruction of whatever it happens to run into. Darkness, thunder and the Dead of Night music, and here I am, entirely unmoved.
Tomorrow: The Unexplainable Happenings.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
Trask tells Gerard, “He told me he came to England — came from England on a certain boat.”
Flora tells Trask, “Dear Letricia isn’t in her room.”
Trask says that Leticia had a vision of the Old House, and Flora says, “But that is when the original Barnabas lived there, isn’t it?”
Trask says, “Yes, that’s true, but I don’t think — I do think he had something to do with it!” Concerned, Flora gets up, saying, “You don’t think he had anything to do with it!” Trask frowns and says, “What I think is my business.”
Behind the Scenes:
As a promotional gimmick leading up to the House of Dark Shadows release, Jonathan Frid and Nancy Barrett participated as judges in a nationwide Miss American Vampire contest which I wrote about in “The Summer of Our Discontent“. The contest winner was supposed to get a part in the show for a week, but the winner apparently didn’t want to do it, so instead the runner-up, Christine Domaniecki, slumps around the bar set for a couple of scenes and drinks out of other people’s glasses. You don’t really get to see her face very much, and they misspelled her name as “Christine Domaneck” in the end credits, but not everyone gets to be on Dark Shadows, so it must have been a pretty cool experience. I’m not sure what she did for the next thirty years, but according to her IMDb page, she became a makeup artist in 1999. She’s worked on a lot of movies, including Zoolander, The Royal Tenenbaums, A Beautiful Mind, Spider-Man and The Wolf of Wall Street, and recently created a “hand laid beard,” whatever that is, for Oscar Isaac in the upcoming film Life Itself. She attended a Dark Shadows convention in Norwalk, CT in June 2015.
Tim Braithwaite is played by Dick Sabol, whose other credits include a 1962 episode of Route 66, a 1967 episode of The Jackie Gleason Show, and a couple blaxploitation films (Cotton Comes to Harlem in 1970 and the 1972 sequel, Come Back Charleston Blue). He was also in the original Broadway cast of Promises, Promises and Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.
Judah Zachary’s body is played by Norman Parker in four episodes. Parker also appeared in March 1969, when Angelique showed Barnabas a vision of how his 1897 time trip would end — with an unknown figure (Parker) driving a stake into Barnabas’ heart. As it turned out, Parker was a stand-in for Charity Trask.
Tomorrow: The Unexplainable Happenings.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
I checked out Christine Domaniecki’s IMDb listing, her resume as a makeup artist is pretty impressive — I’ve actually heard of most of the movies that she worked on. Then I checked out her acting resume,which is pretty sparse — except for DS, it’s direct to video stuff, but one of the titles is SpiderBabe (2003), a soft-core porn version of Spiderman, in which Ms. Domaniecki plays a character named Bubble VaVoom.
Possibly what Dan Curtis could be doing with the Dead of Night music is recycling. If Dead of Night had been a hit, then he instead would have had to commission new music from Bob Cobert — which likely would have cost him more.
With The Complete Dark Shadows Soundtrack Music Collection, you notice that toward the last year or so of the show the music becomes less melodic and more percussive. Most of the favorite, best-known Dark Shadows music was composed and recorded before the show went on the air. Discs 1 and 2 have essentially everything you want to know about the soundtrack to Dark Shadows, especially with all those Blue Whale instrumentals on disc 2. From disc 3 onward, it’s kind of all downhill from there as they say.
Was this the episode where Willie — I mean, Desmond — goes into the drawing room to question Leticia about the clues to the hill with the rings and things he got from Otis Greene, only to have Leticia taunt him for being stupid and laughing at him while she nibbles on that big hamburger-size yellow sugar cookie?
It’s a long time since anyone ate any actual food on the show.
That’s not a sugar cookie – it’s a Paul Lynde/Bewitched driving instructor sized tranquilizer.
I much preferred the Dead of Night/head theme to the most-annoying Daphn’s Ghost theme from 1970. It was almost as shrill as Hallie’s voice.
I think the high whining note is a theremin, if you care. Which it doesn’t sound like you really do, but still.
I think the theremin has its place. I just don’t like the Daphne’s Ghost theme.
I don’t have a problem with this theme. I can’t remember what the Daphne’s Ghost one was, off hand.
I think the high instrument is an organ, supported by a theremin. I’m rather fond of Cue 316.
So far, i have been able to recall seeing plot-lines, if not actual episodes, when they were originally aired. For the life of me, i cannot remember this thing with the mask or a headless horseman (minus the horse). Did i block it out to protect my young and tender years?
Another elephant in the room (or the secret burial chamber, anyway) –
Why would the righteous beheaders of Judah Zachery go to all the trouble to dig the chamber, put in the body, pin it shut with a big wooden cross (which admittedly IS a stunning visual piece in any secret burial chamber or basement rec room) –
and PUT IN THE VERY THING THAT MIGHT REASSEMBLE the evilest man in history there in the coffin with the body?
Was this part of some plea deal?
Magistrate (who looks and sounds a good deal like Addison Powell): All right, we’ll put the mask in with your body. (Pause.) As long as you’re swearing that it isn’t evil.
Judah: Oh, I swear! Cross my heart, hope to… well, I swear. Just want something to fabulize that dreary burial chamber.
Magistrate: Okay, but be warned. We’re going to pin your body into the coffin with this really big, heavy cross, that nobody but a brawny sailor could possibly shift. And we’re going to put your head ALL THE WAY on the other side of town, where nobody will ever find it. EVER. We know how to deal with evil in this town. Kicking the problem down the road will solve EVERYTHING.
This is where those yo ho hoing pirates could have come in handy. Their ship is moored in Collinsport and they’re drinking barrels of rum at the Blue Whale. Tim Braithewaite hears them drunkenly bragging about the treasure chest on board the ship, which is bursting with ill gotten booty from the four corners of the Earth. Tim sneaks away to board the ship and steals – the jeweled mask. Tim has the mask with him when he enters the crypt, where its evil reanimates Judah’s body.
Problem solved. You got a demonically reanimated headless corpse on the loose and a passel of pissed off pirates who will still be holding a grudge in 1970.
Works for me, Samantha.
Oh, yes, thanks! Some pirate booty for me, please!
A belated reply – But that would mean paying actual actors to play the pirates, including at least one speaking (or bragging) part,
Name ONE time…wait, well… okay name FIFTY TIMES that hasn’t worked!
When I first saw this as a kid, I didn’t question the plots, I just accepted them. I still think that’s the best way to watch Dark Shadows. Thinking about it too much just gives me a headache, but, yes, the Inca mask is another thing that must be given a hypothetical backstory in order for it to make any sense! The people who buried the body would have destroyed it if they had found it so it must have been placed there later. Perhaps Otis brought it but was able to break Judah’s control before allowing his resurrection? Or some other earlier person under Judah’s control placed it there? Doesn’t answer how Judah came across it in the first place or how it fits into Judah’s powers at all! Nor does it explain it having it’s own compartment!
My head hurts again.
Watching TV as a child is really the best way of doing it.
It’s just lazy writing, to me. Use a mask. Use magic. It’s that easy.
Next day.
That’s probably the reason.
They were looking for a way to get from point a to point b as quickly as possible, with little fuss and an interesting visual. The mask is set dressing, like the cross. The cross just makes more sense. The mask is a contrivance.
Another promotional gimmick – somewhere around this time, viewers were pleasantly surprised with Jonathan Frid’s mystery guest appearance on “What’s My Line?”. Somewhere, because unlike the original CBS prime time offering, this new 1970s version of “Line?” was produced for five day a week, first run syndication. Syndication at the time was pretty much a “bicycle” system – massive catalogs of episodes sent to various stations, various stations playing said episodes before sending them to other stations, more massive catalogs of episodes sent to various stations, etc. etc. over. and. over. and over. It was pretty much the exception, not the rule, when multiple markets wound up playing the same five day a week syndication package, but it would happen.
So, while Curtis and company wanted Frid’s guest appearance to coincide with the theatrical release of “House Of Dark shadows”, no doubt some stations were getting that particular episode as late as year’s end, if not 1971. Come to think of it, Bennett Cerf, a semi regular during this “What’s My Line?” era, passed away August 1971. Thanks (or no thanks) to the “bicycle” system, he was still showing up for some markets in brand new episodes. Long after his passing. Long after he was really required to contractually fulfill that obligation. What can one say, some performers are real troupers.
“What’s My Line?” has a title close to Jonathan Frid’s heart!
They’ve been spending more money on the show in these episodes. Used to be they would show a coffin that had supposedly just been dug up from a grave and it was in showroom polish. Of course it was- the next morning, Dan Curtis Productions was sending it back to the showroom they’d borrowed it from. In the tomb of Judah Zachery’s From the Neck Down, they’ve not only strewn debris on the coffin and wedged a big prop on top of it, they’ve cut a Dutch door into the lid. I didn’t see that that door when they showed us the same coffin in Trask’s chapel last week.
I can’t remember who said it, but one of my favorite quotes is “An actor will remember every notice he ever received long after he has forgotten his phone number and where he lives.”
Apparently, I had forgotten about the Inca mask and headless wandering corpse.
I thought it was a rip-off of an old 3D movie calledThe mask.
They did a 1966 episode of “Lost In Space” where Professor Robinson is possessed by an evil spirit that uses a mask…
I hadn’t forgotten. Those scenes of Leticia guiding the headless body through the woods were embarrassingly funny.
Her future self was probably having flashbacks while dealing with Adam! (Yes, I know that was Carolyn but those Fayes hang around.)
Oh, who can love the end credits
“The Head” played by Michael McGuire
“The Body” played by Norman Parker.
I would have loved to see a credit
“The Foot” played by
“The Gallbladder” played by…
And the song goes
“The head bone is NOT connected to the neck bone…”
A very on-point post. This is exactly why I just don’t understand people who say, “Oh, I love 1840!” Seriously, what is to love? No characterization, no real story, just gimmicks and set-ups to add a sting after at the end of each scene. Why oh why didn’t they just go back to 1897 and pick up where they left off? No Gerard and Daphne — Petofi was the one to destroy Collinwood, having finally found his way to the future. So we go back to 1897, and to characters we already know and care about–Judith, Edward, Pansy/Charity, Magda–and we could have gotten Quentin back there, too, as the real, 100% Quentin, not this terrible copy, whose more like the obnoxious PT Quentin than “our” Quentin. Imagine another go-round with Petofi instead of these boring, boring, boring 1840 cardboard cutouts (dreary Samantha and Gabriel is just Snidely Whiplash in a wheelchair.)
I have been very vocal about my dislike of the constant time travel on the show, but Will, I have to agree with you here. They made several trips back to 1795, so why not another trip to 1897? Of course I would have preferred a good story with the core characters of 1970, but the writers just seemed to be at a loss for coming up with the main family after the Leviathans.
Didn’t they basically kill everyone off at the end of the 1897 storyline?
Only Trask, Aristede, and Evan. Kitty traveled back to 1795. I have my doubts that Petofi died.
But, that wouldn’t matter, if you did 1897pt.
Ooooh!
Thank God. Someone else hated that Dead of Night music as much as I did.
The scene with Flora and Trask in this episode is particularly error-prone. But apparently we didn’t see the worst of it because there’s a big ugly edit while we’re looking a Flora’s face.
Your talking about the DS soundtrack inspired me to buy it when I was at the 2016 convention. I love listening to it in the car
Coin nerd alert: Desmond offers Tim a $20 gold coin, which did not exist until (?) 1850. Freezing the frame, it looks like a gold-painted Morgan Silver Dollar, which would not exist until 1878.
How did Desmond get it? It’s obvious that one of the time travelers hauled it back from the future. Maybe Desmond found a hoard of them, dips them in gold paint, and tricks local drunks with them.
This may explain how Barnabas financed the Old House restorations with only one box of jewels. Go back in time, game the system, bury some common coins, dig them up a century later and send Willy off to sell them when they’re rare.
Still, how would Desmond get that coin? I can see how he’d find an undead sorceror’s head, sure, but a coin?
How the hell does any Collins get his/her money, really? It just seems to be around, like random farms, cows, and cemeteries.
“Trask says that Leticia had a vision of the Old House, and Flora says, ‘But that is when the original Barnabas lived there, isn’t it?’” Flora is referring to the time of Rev. Trask’s death in 1797, not Leticia’s vision. Lamar is saying Leticia had a vision about 1797.
and who passed away in real life just last month: on April 22 2021.
https://www.northwoodfh.com/obituary/Dick-Sabol