“I can’t put together the parts of a body into a human, with life or breath.”
02:32.
Sexy vampire Tom Jennings approaches his victim, Julia. As Tom bares his fangs to bite her, he crosses his eyes.
Category Archives: Sam Hall
Episode 565: Weird Science
“Now, I want you to try to keep making some sense out of this.”
Okay, so here’s a weird story:
A race against time at Collinwood, for night has come, and with it, a new threat — the rising of a new vampire. One man has risked his life, and his reputation, to end the vampire’s career before it can start.
Usually, I don’t pay much attention to the opening voiceover, but today’s is practically surreal. He risked his reputation? What does that mean? And since when do vampires have careers?
Episode 564: Dig Dug
“We’re not robbing a grave, Willie. We’re dealing with an enemy.”
I know, everybody’s got their own problems, and when there’s an immediate crisis in your life, you tend to put off the long-term thinking, and just focus on what’s in front of you.
Still, I think that if your planned evening of grave-robbing is interrupted by an urgent need to go on a completely unrelated grave-robbing excursion — that is the moment that you need to stop and re-evaluate.
Episode 563: A Sense of Themselves
“The house, the room. The coffin!”
Here’s a list of 32 things that I like about this episode, in order of appearance, with a special focus on pretty boys in peril, and introducing Miss Beverly Atkinson.
Episode 550: The Afternoon After
“I have a terrible fear that something’s going to happen.”
Yesterday’s episode closed with Adam, our enormous and confused teen Frankenstein, thrusting himself romantically at a young woman who would have preferred otherwise. He’s six-foot-six and has superhuman strength, while she’s somewhere in the low five feet, and at press time was saying “Adam, you’re hurting me.” Things were definitely shaping up to be one of those American tragedies that you read about in the papers.
Today’s episode begins with Carolyn walking downstairs, post-trauma. Her hair is messed up, but her blouse and skirt are intact, so I guess that means that everything worked out more or less okay.
Episode 549: Take What You Want
“All men are allowed to fall in love. It’s expected of them, actually.”
You know, people complain about how difficult homeschooling is, but it’s a breeze, really. At school, there’s a real problem with classroom size, and that’s even more important when your child is a 6’6″ Frankenstein with kung fu grip. He needs the personalized attention that he can only get from a child-centered environment. Besides, they’re teaching about evolution at school and not creationism — which, for a child assembled in a mad science lab, is pretty insensitive.
Homeschooling is super convenient, too. All you need to do is give him some books and keep him in a dusty old cobweb sanctuary, and the kid practically educates himself. Then you arrange for some seriously ill-advised sex ed training, and you’re good to go.
Episode 548: Bleak Lives Matter
“I can make you older. I can make you die. But I cannot assemble a human being and have him live.”
You know, the great thing about having an evil magician as the lead villain of your television show is that conjurers tend to be showmen. Yes, even the evil ones. You don’t devote your life to the study of pulling demon rabbits out of sinister hats without developing a certain panache.
At the moment, the Great Nicholas is punishing his lovely assistant, Angelique, for disobeying his direct instructions. He’s taken her powers away and made her mortal again, and now she’s crumbling to dust while we watch.
Angelique staggers upstairs to find her portrait, which has helped her overcome setbacks in the past. But when she gets to Vicki’s room, she finds that the portrait is cracked and peeling, suffering the same fate.
And then Nicholas steps out of the shadows and turns on a lamp, as if to say, is THIS your card?
Episode 547: Justice in Hell
“Instead of a dream, you threaten me with a gun. Are you bored with your tricks and your spells?”
In yesterday’s post, I did a little compare and contrast exercise between Dark Shadows and a March 1968 episode of General Hospital, which was DS’ lead-in at the time. What I found was two shows that share the same network and afternoon timeslot, but feel like they were made in different decades.
By 1968, General Hospital’s storylines were starting to break away from the old-fashioned kitchen sink approach to soap opera, where the stories are supposed to be a slice of life that the audience can personally relate to. The GH episode that we looked at includes a girl who’s accusing her stepmother of killing her father, and a woman who’s struggling to put her life back together after a traumatic car accident that resulted in a miscarriage.
Those situations aren’t really a part of typical daily life, especially when they happen to the same extended family at the same time, but they’re not outrageous.
Meanwhile, a Dark Shadows episode starts at unbelievably insane in the first scene, and then ratchets the tension up from there.
Episode 546: A Little Bored
“I can punish you for having such human emotions!”
Angelique approaches her boss, her eyes pleading. “Mr. Blair,” she ventures, “do you think maybe I should talk to her?”
“Well, all right, Angelique,” Nicholas nods.
“Thank you, Mr. Blair,” she says, and moves toward the door.
“Oh, Angelique…” he says. “You won’t say anything to her about not being able to have any more children?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Blair, I won’t do that,” says Angelique. “But maybe I can help her come to her senses. You know, she has so much to be happy about, Mr. Blair, and I’m going to tell her so!” Fire flashes in her eyes. “Somebody’s got to!”
And then she turns and leaves the room, and the organ music starts up, and it turns out we were watching General Hospital by accident.
Episode 538: The Shaggy Dog
“I owe my life to a man I vowed to kill.”
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the craziest show on Earth, where they inter and disinter their major characters at regular intervals.
Barnabas was attacked by a bat last week, and he died, because bat attacks are invariably fatal, as everyone knows. Convinced that he would rise as a vampire, Julia and Willie buried him in the woods, because they’re bad role models and that’s all there is to it.
This was bad news for Adam, our enormous Frankenstein man, because he’s been borrowing some of Barnabas’ life force this whole time. When Barnabas went down, Adam’s system crashed too. This is why, if you’re shopping for life force, you should just go ahead and buy the protection plan. I know, it’s an extra fifty bucks, but can you really put a price tag on peace of mind?
Dark Shadows Every Day 