Monthly Archives: December 2020

Episode 1204: Minimum Security

February 1971, Sam Hall,

“Tears never got anyone out of anything!”

Let’s talk about the decision-making process for the Collins family here in 1841 Parallel Time, a next-door existence where people have made different choices, all of them terrible.

In this version of the timeline, the Collinses are being held captive by a room in their own house. Refusing all entreaties and resistant to redecoration, this room has bedeviled them since before the house was even built. The room’s been there since 1680, and as I recall, they finished construction around 1795; they must have architected this entire mansion around the sinister locked door, which was floating in the air a couple stories above sea level.

I wish that I could say that was the stupidest choice this family ever made, but they have been breaking that record non-stop for as long as anyone can remember.

Continue reading Episode 1204: Minimum Security →

Episode 1203: Frocks and Violence

February 1971, Gordon Russell, , ,

“I think the only thing wrong with the Collinses is a hundred and sixty years of accumulated fear!”

Well, that spooky door is still at it, I suppose. I took a couple episodes off from writing about the 1841 Parallel Collinses, and I thought maybe they would have gotten hold of the situation by now, but no, they’re in just as much of a mess as they were in on Friday, maybe more so.

You see, there’s a really angry door in this version of Collinwood, an evil parallel door that has made different choices, and everyone in the family is afraid of getting on its bad side. You can’t let the architecture get ahead of you like this; at a certain point you have to tell the doors who’s in charge. You can’t live your life trying to make your doors happy; after a while, the walls start getting jealous, and then you’ve got real problems.

Continue reading Episode 1203: Frocks and Violence →

Episode 1202: The Leftovers

February 1971, Gordon Russell, , , , , , , ,

“I have a premonition of unpleasant happenings at the antique barn.”

And the winners, apparently, are Paperback Library and Gold Key Comics.

Dark Shadows is still filling time for a couple of months on television, but as of last week, the show is no longer an active participant as a chronicler of the Collins family that we love. Barnabas is safe at home, Quentin is only as insane as he’s supposed to be, and that is all that we shall ever know about their ongoing activities. For ABC Television, the concept of “Barnabas” is no longer their concern.

But the tie-in media continues, long after that dreadful April Third. For one thing, the ridiculous Dark Shadows comic strip starts in March, and runs for a year, coming to an unsteady stop in March 1972. The Paperback Library gothics also run until March 1972, and the Gold Key comic book line stretches all the way to February 1976. There may not be enough housewives interested in Dark Shadows to make it worth All-Temperature Cheer’s while to support a vampire show, but there are enough teenagers to satisfy Gold Key that Dark Shadows can remain more-or-less current in American pop culture for another five years.

So these are the standard-bearers for the characters from now on, the only people who still believe that there’s a market for stories about Barnabas and Quentin. As far as television is concerned, these characters are museum pieces, and as the spin-offs spin on, the question becomes: Does anyone want to buy these antiques?

Continue reading Episode 1202: The Leftovers →

Episode 1201: Willie Loomis Must Die: The Movie

February 1971, Gordon Russell, , , , ,

“You’re just as frightened as both of us!”

“Hurts… everything hurts!”

Five months ago, Willie Loomis snuck out to the Collins family mausoleum, looking for buried treasure. Opening a hidden mystery box, he unleashed one hundred and seventy-two years worth of hunger and fury into the world.

“Don’t! Don’t hurt me!”

His name is Barnabas Collins, and he has been using Willie as a housekeeper, a carpenter, an accomplice, a snack bar — and, now, as a patsy, who’ll take the fall for Barnabas’ crimes.

“Is it dark?”

Now Willie’s in the hospital with five bullets in his back, gunned down by law enforcement while trying to warn one of Barnabas’ victims.

“Is it dark outside?”

The vampire knows that if Willie tells the police what he was doing, then his secrets will be exposed. He has no choice: Willie Loomis must die.

“I’m afraid of the night! Don’t let it be dark, please! Don’t let be dark!”

But Willie has lost his mind, from pain and horror and fear. He is hopelessly insane, and he’s shipped off to a sanitarium, to live out the rest of his shattered life.

“Don’t hurt me! Please, don’t hurt me!”

And then seven months later, Barnabas needs him to come back and clean up after his new pet Frankenstein, and Willie says sure, no problem, we’re total besties.

So when Dark Shadows fans say that someone should remake the show, telling the same story but skipping the Dream Curse and the Leviathans, then you have to ask: if a writer isn’t desperately trying to fall downstairs and land on their feet every day to churn out another half-hour of daytime television by any means necessary… Does the story of Dark Shadows actually make any goddamn sense?

Continue reading Episode 1201: Willie Loomis Must Die: The Movie →

Episode 1200: The Woman in What?

January 1971, Sam Hall, , ,

“No one will find me, including the thing in that room!”

It’s difficult to build up an audience for a daytime soap opera; you have to catch lightning in a bottle just to get people’s attention in the first place. You need to create likeable characters that people can relate to, and put them in interesting and dramatic situations. You have to write dialogue that speaks to the audience, and touches on their concerns. You have to create an intimacy, a real connection, that makes the audience want to tune in every single day.

I mean, unless it’s the last two months of Dark Shadows, in which case don’t bother. Who even cares?

Continue reading Episode 1200: The Woman in What? →

Episode 1199: The Wuthering

January 1971, Sam Hall, , , , , ,

“Sometimes I regret all these things we’ve had to do because of that room.”

Yesterday, Dark Shadows as we know it came to a close, as eccentric millionaire Barnabas Collins and his boon companions Julia Hoffman and T. Eliot Stokes completed their journey to there and back again, returning home in debatable triumph. They’d traveled to the year 1840 with the goal of changing history, hopefully in a localized area and not one of those Nazis won the war type deals. All they wanted to do is stop Gerard and the unhallowed dead from tromping through Collinwood in 1970, leaving the house in ruins and killing a whole bunch of people that they liked.

Whether it actually worked or not is very much up for debate, because they never really had a clear idea of exactly what they were trying to stop. When they pulled this kind of maneuver the first time, in the 1897 storyline, Julia was told the chain of events that specifically needed averting, so it was child’s play to consult the chronometer and find out whether they’d done it or not. In 1840, they didn’t have a map, so the reckless wreakers of time crime just went around stomping on butterflies and hoping for the best.

Well, somebody must have done something clever while they were gone, because they climbed the magic stairs back to a world where everyone is alive, including them. Apparently, someone’s been living at Collinwood for the last four months in their place, doing things that the travelers don’t remember doing, which is yet another surprising choice on the part of the Dark Shadows writers. It would have been easy to have Elizabeth asking where they’d gone, we’ve been so worried, and so on, but Dark Shadows took the road less traveled, as they so often do, and personally I’m grateful to have one last impossible mystery to remember them by.

That’s the end of the show, really, with Barnabas, Julia and Stokes merrily skipping off to the historical center, where they’ll learn how the Nazis won the war. But everyone who watches Dark Shadows knows that just because you die, it doesn’t mean you have to lie down and stop bothering people. Death is just a change of address, and Dark Shadows still has one last story to tell. So off we go, into the unknown.

Continue reading Episode 1199: The Wuthering →

Episode 1198: Goodbye to All That

January 1971, Sam Hall, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Without even planning it, I’ve committed the perfect crime.”

And then, I suppose, Gabriel and Edith’s children come home from boarding school to find an empty house. Their parents are dead, their grandfather is dead, Aunt Samantha is dead, Uncle Quentin has run off to Boston with the governess, and Uncle Desmond has run off to New York with a music hall performer. Nobody’s buried Samantha or their mother, or this strange Valerie Collins who they’ve never even heard of, because the funeral director has mysteriously disappeared, and the police are busting open brick alcoves all over Collinsport, just in case he’s behind one of them.

Aunt Flora is the only one left on the estate, and she’s gone mad, apparently; she can hardly answer a single question about the last four months without babbling about ghosts and vampires and mysterious decapitations. Uncle Quentin was tried for witchcraft, she says, but he was spared at the last moment by a witch, who accused somebody else of witchcraft, and then Uncle Desmond shot somebody, and somehow nobody went to prison.

Now they have to arrange for Aunt Flora’s stay at Rushmore Sanitarium, and sell Rose Cottage to young Mr. McGruder, and clear out the empty coffin in the basement of the Old House that their mysterious cousins from Philadelphia apparently left behind, before they too vanished without a word of explanation.

And then they’re alone, this unknown handful of necessary descendants, to repopulate the mansion and try to survive. Is it any wonder, on that terrible night, that they called upon the dark creatures of nature to bring their dead mother back from the grave?

Continue reading Episode 1198: Goodbye to All That →

Episode 1197: The Night I Sang My Song

Gordon Russell, January 1971, , , , , , , , ,

“How can we know with any certainty whom this head possesses?”

So that was it! Oh, you clever boys; the Dark Shadows team has done it again. That’s why the horoscope was unfinished. Now we understand why Gerard needed to bring Tad and Carrie back to life, and the significance of the dollhouse and the carousel, and why Gerard showed up at the picnic, and where all those dead pirates came from.

It was all about the playroom, after all, just like we knew it would be. I bet anyone who thought that the Dark Shadows writers were just making things up as they went along must be feeling pretty silly, right about now.

Continue reading Episode 1197: The Night I Sang My Song →

Episode 1196: The Dark Creatures of Nature

January 1971, Sam Hall, , , , , , , , ,

“You are a woman again, a natural woman, and therefore you can cause a lot of trouble.”

“Prince of Fire,” says Angelique Valerie Cassandra Miranda DuBois DuVal Blair Bouchard Rumson Collins, “I call upon the flame to summon you in this, my most desperate hour of need. I call upon all the dark creatures of nature to aid me in the destruction of one who is my mortal enemy! I beseech you, grant me the power to destroy this man!”

It’s a weird way to begin a love letter, but she’s been married at least three times more often than I have, so what do I know?

Continue reading Episode 1196: The Dark Creatures of Nature →

Episode 1195: The Trask Parts

Gordon Russell, January 1971, , ,

“If you give me any trouble, there won’t be any need for an execution!”

A bloodthirsty creature of the supernatural! A child who has been touched by a witch! A ring fit for Satan himself! A small, frail body possessed by a giant, evil force! A warlock named Quentin Collins! A well-known signature of the Devil!

Continue reading Episode 1195: The Trask Parts →