“There is a world — an evil world — which exists for some men.”
He’s not a handsome man, it’s true, but he’s powerful, and portable, and persistent. And he’s the man of your dreams, in the sense that you keep having naptime nightmares where his disembodied head bosses you around.
We’re all familiar with Judah Zachery the paperweight, lurking on the credenza in his glass enclosure, silently slipping through your defenses and inspiring you to steal newspapers and murder an antiques dealer with the wrong ancestor. But what of Judah Zachery, the man?
His eyes could bewitch you, they said. He lured beautiful young women to his house, and persuaded them to participate in unspeakable acts. And this was in the 1690s, when they really were unspeakable, because nobody had invented the slang words to describe them yet.
That was a hundred and fifty years ago, give or take, and for all that time, he’s been operating at a serious disadvantage. They say size doesn’t matter, but try to lure somebody somewhere when you’re ten inches total.
But that ends today. This is the day that Judah Zachery breaks out of his box, and gets his groove on.
The procedure is as follows. First, you acquire a human head in a glass case. This step is relatively easy, if you happen to live in Macau, a Portuguese trading post in southern China, where there’s a legendary warlock heads outlet mall. If you don’t live in Macau, and you don’t have any Portuguese friends, then you may need to order a head online.
Once you have a warlock head, the next step is to tire of it — also an easy task which is bound to happen sooner or later, without even trying. Warlock heads make for difficult roommates, because they always need something, like a pen or a glass of water or a human body to walk around in, and they don’t ask; they just take. After yours has been taken several times without your permission, you will naturally find that enthusiasm wanes.
But disposing of your warlock head is relatively difficult, uness you happen to live near a legendary warlock head recycling center, which again, being in Macau is going to make all the difference. The alternative is to repack the head in its original packaging, take it up to the top of Widow’s Hill, and throw it off the cliff, shouting “Goodbye, Judah Zachery!” And even that doesn’t work most of the time.
So then Humbert Allen Astredo shows up with a brand new legendary warlock head like a delivery from AmazonFresh, unboxing it in Gerard’s suite whether he likes it or not. And thank goodness for the intervention of Humbert A, because this plotline has been stalling and making juddering noises for weeks now. It’s time for the head to get up, and take some responsibility.
The concern here is that Gerard is the best character in a storyline not overly full of good characters, a charming and volatile gun runner who smiles and smolders and does anything he likes. I’ve recently decided that Gerard is the new Quentin — a reckless, sexy rogue who strides through the story, making interesting things happen. Quentin has been gradually abdicating from this role since somewhere in the 990s, and by now, I’ve given up hope of recovery. So Gerard is the recast kaiju. Among the tall, dark and handsome, Quentin’s more handsome, but Gerard’s more dark, which has its own appeal.
So the last thing we want to see is this bright spot of the screen taken over by a ranty one-note shouter like Judah Zachery, who talks entirely in reverb. “I have chosen you, and you will become me!” he booms. “Through you, I will live again!” You can always tell how a conversation is going to go by how many audible exclamation points you can hear in a row.
“Whatever we want will be ours!” continues the head. “The Devil gave me powers!” That’s all standard boilerplate, but then he transitions to the hard sell. “You will know my secrets! You will have servants, faithful as this man!” He means Humbert, who’s not exactly a killer app. But then he follows with, “Anyone you want will be in our power!” which is a concept with guaranteed sales appeal.
“Put on the mask!” the head urges, licking his lips. “Put on the mask… Judah Zachery!”
That is what Gerard does, and that is who Gerard becomes.
So this is the critical juncture, right here. As I said, we’ve got a substitute Quentin here who can make the next two months a lot easier, or a lot harder. If this is now Judah Zachery’s head, embodied and embittered, who’s going to spend a lot of airtime doing competitive eyebrow tricks and dictating instruction manuals, then I have grave fears for the future.
But if this is Gerard, who we know and I love, even if you don’t happen to — but with stronger magic powers, and a new focus for his story arc — then we’ve got the chance to make 1840 worthwhile.
“My coven and I have waited so long for your return, Judah!” Humbert grovels.
And there we are, a smoldering smirk from the kaiju, right out of the box. We might actually pull this off.
“I can move again,” he says, demonstrating. “I feel the warmth within my body.” I bet he does.
He moves to the fireplace, and rests an elbow on the mantelpiece. “And I know who my enemies are.” He raises an eyebrow. “I live amongst them.” And then he delivers what could have been another attractive smirk, if the Dark Shadows directors still knew how to light and frame a shot.
Meanwhile, Humbert released his master from the dead less than sixty seconds ago, and now all he can do is complain.
“But we must go carefully!” he whines.
“Are you giving me orders?”
“No! But you must realize –”
“I realize everything!” Gerard declares.
“Do you?” Humbert roars. “You have been invincible for so long — you are not now!”
Gerard hands Humbert the unbothered glare of the man who realizes everything. He’s remarkably self-assured for a guy who was actually pretty vincible for the last century and a half. “Do you think that I would let anyone kill me?” he chuckles.
“Gerard Stiles’ body can die!” Humbert shouts. “Your body is mortal, never forget that!” I guess everyone else in the house is out shopping, or playing the piano, or maybe they’re used to hearing stuff like this, and they hardly even notice it anymore.
Gerard allows himself a moment’s monologue, which as a supervillain he’s entitled to.
“Just before I died,” he growls, “as the hooded executioner raised his axe, I vowed that this moment would come, that I would punish all those responsible!” This is starting to sound like another unpleasant helping of exclamation points, but then he pulls himself back, and practically purrs when he talks about Miranda.
“She calls herself Valerie,” he smiles. “She still knows me as Gerard Stiles. And it will remain that way… until the golden moment.”
And he gets a golden moment, just a few scenes later, when Judah Zachery earns his first taste of flirtation in a long time. Yes, Judah was a champion ladylurer in his day, but as I said earlier, that day was the 1690s, plus he had a big nose, and a bag over his head half the time. This is the first ridealong in his new Gerard-shaped body, and it looks like he’s enjoying the experience.
The target is some redshirt floozy named Lorna Bell, who he meets at a funeral parlor right next to the closed casket. It’s not the most opportune pickup spot, but the new Quentin can fish in any pond he likes. He actually reels her in with an invite to a private memorial service for the deceased, which I’ve never tried and don’t plan to. But if Gerudah makes that work first crack out of the box, then he’s got all the game he needs.
It ends badly for her, obviously, that’s the whole point, is to see the new Big Bad in his disco devil attire. This is Gerard plus, the blackmailing gun runner with the dangerous smile, with some new accessories and a slight modification to his sinister plan. Plotting against Quentin is probably something that Gerard would have gotten around to anyway; this just picks up the pace.
Tomorrow: Viva Droopy.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
Fresh out of the box, Gerard asks Dawson, “Will I know their names? Will their ancestors follow me, as yours did?”
During Gerard’s monologue, you can see Dawson clearly, but Gerard is out of focus in the foreground for more than thirty seconds. They even pull in a little to get exactly the shot they want, but they still don’t get him in focus; if anything, it’s worse.
Quentin arrives at the funeral home wearing a powder-blue suit, not really appropriate for mourning. I guess he didn’t like his sister-in-law all that much.
When Quentin approaches Lorna, she starts to say her line before he finishes his.
When Trask tells Gerard about Lorna’s death, Gerard says, “The woman that I met here just a few minu– what happened to her?” He catches himself before he says “a few minutes,” because this is supposed to be several hours later.
When Trask displays Lorna’s corpse, she’s clearly breathing, and her eyes move.
Quentin tells Trask, “You know, there’s so much violence in the village anymore. There never used to be.”
Trask says, “I also didn’t not tell the constable that I overheard her say she would meet you later.”
Behind the Scenes:
Lorna Bell is another one of those disposable fallen women with a roguish gleam in their eye and a drastically abbreviated lifespan, which you tend to see in fiction written by men over the last three to four thousand years. She appears in two episodes, today’s and Friday’s. She’s played by Marilyn Joseph, and this is her only screen credit. Joseph appeared on Broadway for a month and a half in 1969 in A Patriot for Me — playing, unfortunately, a Whore.
Tomorrow: Viva Droopy.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
Now Gerard becomes one note evil and no longer interesting.
Fun fact: Marilyn Joseph was married to Christopher Pennock.
Marilyn Joseph was also soon to be married to Christopher Pennock.
Hulu currently has episodes 982-1185 (in addition to 210-290). So, for the time being, if you have Hulu you can watch the episode Danny is writing about before reading the latest blog post.
For those who didn’t know Marilyn Joseph married Christopher Pennock.
Wait a minute – I thought Marilyn Joseph married Christopher Pennock?
Really? I thought Marilyn Joseph married Christopher Pennock.
Then again, it could have been that Christopher Pennock married Marilyn Joseph.
That screencap of Gerard wearing the mask looks like something straight out of original Doctor Who.
Maybe this ‘alternate universe’ DS is also on another planet!
There was “The Masque of Mandragora” from 1977 where the villian wore a gold face mask. There were two seasons in the 1970s under Robert Holmes that took the show in the direction of supernatural horror.
“There was The Masque of Mandragora from 1977 where the villian wore a gold face mask …”
Go back a little bit further to the film Black Sunday (1960) [a.k.a. Mask of Satan] with Barbara Steele:
WATCH the first 16 minutes and you will notice the six (6) startling similarities to the Judah Zachery’s tale in Dark Shadows:
(1) WITCH / WARLOCK: It’s a film about a witch (Barbara Steele) put to death centuries ago — DS merely changed the gender of Judah Zachery from a witch to a warlock.
Observe how her executioners take a metal mask with spikes inside and kill her by smashing the spiky mask into her face with a sledgehammer! OUCH!!!! I’ll bet Gerard is relieved Judah’s gold mask didn’t have those painful spikes inside!!! 😮
(2) REVENGE: She promises revenge on her executioners — just like Judah Zachery vengeance on the Collins family.
(3) The COFFIN HAS A WINDOW: She is placed in a sarcophagus with a little window where the corpse’s eyes would be — just like Zachery’s coffin had a window where his head would have been!
(4) METAL MASK in the COFFIN: The metal mask stays on the face of her corpse in the sarcophagus, just like the mask stays in the coffin with Judah Zachery body in the place where a head would be. (The only difference is they leave her head attached to her body, whereas Zachery is beheaded and his head is stored separately from the rest of the body in a glass box, I suppose, to keep him from coming back to life.)
(5) LARGE CRUCIFIX: A huge cross is located near her sarcophagus to help keep her from escaping — just like a huge wooden cross is positioned over the lid of Judah Zachery’s coffin to keep him inside the box!
(6) COMES ALIVE AGAIN: She then comes back to life to take her revenge on the present day descendants of those who had killed her centuries ago — just like Zachery does to get even with the Collins clan.
Therefore Black Sunday (1960) is where Dark Shadows obtained much of the Judah Zachery storyline.
Am I surprised? Not at all! Because nobody has ever accused the writers of Dark Shadows of using exclusively original material.
🙂
-Count Catofi
Brilliant, Count, and thanks for that detailed summary!
I suppose with the writing staff so overworked, it was easier to sift through 90-minute films then to be taking days skimming through hefty classic works of literature.
On another side note, here’s another instance where they grabbed material direct from a movie.
In HODS, just after Barnabas is let out of the coffin and stalks Daphne Budd — that scene is lifted directly from Hammer’s 1968 movie Dracula Has Risen from the Grave. Right after Christopher Lee’s Dracula is revived, he chases down a woman on a wooded roadway, with that same day for night filming technique.
PrisonerOfTheNight- Thanks so much for your kind words and for the comparison of the Hammer and Daphne Budd scenes!
The Mask of Ba’al looks more and more like a Satanic cake pan or Jello mold, the more I see it. (Or maybe I’m just hungry?)
But it could only be a chocolate devil’s food cake …
♫ … If you eat too much, ooh-ooh
You’ll awake with a tummy ache … ♫
On the good ship
Java Queen? ☕
♫ … Where Blue Whales play
On the gloomy shores of Collinsport Bay … ♫
That cross in Zachery’s grave was a slacker, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to tell you your job, giant cross, and yeah, you kept that headless horseman wannabe pinned for a good long while, but after you got taken off the coffin and propped against the wall, NOTHING.
Not even Barnabas noticed you! Any other cross, he’s all flinchy and wail-ey but you? Nothing. And apparently you had no effect on Minion Leticia, Julia, Head, or Body either. Were you a contract worker or something? “I sit on the coffin. That’s what I do. Anything else, we need to renegotiate.”
A very big piece of the audience for this ABC show was gradeschool kids. And it aired in ABC’s daytime schedule at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon.
So it never ceases to amaze me how ABC ever permitted Dark Shadows to air all of this various deviltry on television in 1970, both the Judah Zachery story in 1970, and also Nicholas Blair’s invocation to summon Satan which occurred earlier in 1968. Such a dark subject matter for that era!
I find it remarkable there wasn’t a great outcry to take the show off the air as harmful to kids or objectionable or blasphemous. Yet somehow they got away with it!
Satanic stuff was really trendy at the time and all over the culture. Rosemary’s baby was in 1968 and kind of kicked it off. It kept going with big movies like the exorcist and the Omen (1976). There were also TV movies and other stuff along the same theme. It was a real entertainment staple back in that era.
“Satanic stuff was really trendy at the time …”
I agree with you that satanic stuff was becoming more trendy by the late 1960’s, like Rosemary’s Baby in ’68. Satanism was popping up a lot more in films by the late 60s and 70s as you point out, it’s true, but satanism definitely wasn’t considered an acceptable activity in general society of the 60s or 70s. Most folks would have considered satanism to be absolutely, unequivocally taboo. Yet they found it interesting to have a peek at the forbidden material in movie theaters and on television.
I can only give an account of how it went in my house. My mom died and my dad remarried, my stepmother was VERY controlling of what I read (i.e. she forbade me to read Gone With the Wind until I was 16). She also worked. When she found out I was watching Dark Shadows, she was upset. After all wasn’t that the one where one woman was having a child by a married man, whose wife was ALSO having his child. That was unacceptable. Once I was able to (very truthfully) tell her that there were no babies whatsoever and no illicit sex, and back it up with a few newspaper articles, she didn’t care that I watched. I mean, who cared about Satanic rites, the REAL threat was premarital sex and the off chance that I might at some point lose my virginity.
When my mom was alive we watched Another World when I came home from school, I continued to watch it during the summers when school was off, I just never mentioned it to my stepmother. It seemed better that way.
Humbert Astredo back in the cast provides a reminder of yet another retcon.
With Angelique, formerly known as Miranda, the 1840 story tries to convince us that it was Judah Zachery who bestowed unto her the powers of witchcraft.
That means we have to forget about Diablos.
I’m sure that Diabolos helped a little… 😈
I think it just pushes her down one level in the management hierarchy. Judah is middle management.
So ‘Miranda’ (powers bestowed upon her by Judah) could have ‘been destroyed’ in some way and been reborn as Angelique in 1770’s Martinique (powers bestowed upon her by Diablos) to become the child that Natalie Dupre remembers from the island (who then grows up to become Josette’s maid). Also Barnabas knew a warlock from Barbados from his travels during the 1700’s who supposedly gave him the secret magic number of the Universe.
Diablos was probably perfectly happy to hand off magic power giving duties at that point. Nicholas and Angelique define high maitenance.
Problem SOLVED.
Except…..How could Angelique, as a child, EVER be “unremarkable”?
Not sure if you’d count this as a blooper, but in the teaser of this episode (reprise of the cliffhanger of yesterday’s episode), Hallie is not at the door when Girard wakes up from his nap nightmare. In the previous episode, Hallie introduced Dawson. Here, just Dawson appears. This is for the obvious fact that Kathy Cody does not appear in today’s episode.
Yes, they didn’t want to have to pay her for an episode she wasn’t even going to be in.
“Quentin tells Trask, ‘You know, there’s so much violence in the village anymore. There never used to be.'” I’m presuming you’re seeing the use of the word “anymore” here as a blooper. It’s not. “Anymore” can be used in the sense of “nowadays.” It sounds a bit odd to some ears, but it’s legit.
There’s a small anachronism here when Angelique goes poking through Julia’s room and it’s something I see a lot in historical recreations. When she opens the wardrobe, the clothes are on hangers, but clothes hangers weren’t produced until the very late 19th century and not much used until the 20th. Clothes would have been folded in drawers or chests, or hung on pegs. Perhaps Julia brought them with her from 1970. Oh, and the wooden top of her bureau is a disgrace – all scratched and stained, as is much of the wooden furniture in Collinwood. The Collinses need to talk to the staff about this.