Tag Archives: haunted

Episode 684: Barnabas Collins and the Mysterious Ghost

February 1969, Sam Hall, , ,

“Lots of things happen in this house that no one can understand.”

It always starts with a box.

You take your fears and your crimes and your regrets, and you bury them deep in the earth, and you tell yourself that no one will ever know. Nobody has a key, and nobody knows where you buried it, and nobody knows that it even exists. The mystery box is hidden forever.

But you know that it’s only a matter of time. Boxes open. That’s pretty much the whole point of boxes.

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Episode 669: My Boyfriend’s Back

Gordon Russell, January 1969, Violet Welles, , ,

“I’d like to meet the man that invented supermarkets, and wring his neck.”

We’ve talked a lot lately about the failure of the 1968 storylines, and I think it’s high time we move on, and talk about the failure of the 1969 storylines. You can’t live in the past forever, except for Angelique, apparently, and I don’t think I’ll ever figure out how she manages it.

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Episode 657: The Unpacking

December 1968, Gordon Russell,

“I still can’t understand it. About the clothes, I mean.”

There’s a long and depressing history of make-believe ghosts in American culture, going back to the late 1840s, when the Fox sisters discovered that they could convince people that ghosts were speaking to them by cracking the joints in their toes. The Fox sisters’ toes, I mean, not the ghosts’ toes. Ghosts don’t have toes. At least, I’ve never heard that they do. Look, it’s not important whether ghosts have toes.

The point is that David and Amy are currently trying to convince the Collinwood domestic staff that there’s a ghost in the house, by committing the most confusing version of spiritualist fraud in haunted house history.

The kids actually have made contact with a real ghost — the spirit of Quentin, a Collins ancestor who wants revenge on the familiy for locking him in a room 70 years ago and letting him starve to death. The angry specter has possessed the children, and he’s using them to further his evil ends, whatever they are.

Meanwhile, Barnabas and Maggie want to take the kids on a trip to Boston, for reasons that I’ll get into later. Quentin is furious, because the children are key to his long-term revenge plan, so David and Amy have to figure out a way to convince everyone to let them stay at Collwinood.

The kids solve this problem by pretending that there’s a different spirit in the house — ghost governess Victoria Winters, who disappeared into the past several weeks ago. So the real ghost in the house is telling the kids to pretend that there’s a make-believe ghost in the house, although it turns out that maybe the make-believe ghost might actually be real too.

Let me see if I can find another way to explain this. Nope, I can’t. That’s what’s happening on the show today. Sorry.

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Episode 649: The Rise and Fall

December 1968, Ron Sproat, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Someone now dead lived in this room.”

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight, our feature bout is a winner-takes-all cage match between the savvy psychic, Madame Janet Findley, and the sinister specter, Mr. Quentin Collins (deceased).

Quentin has been quietly haunting the halls of the great house at Collinwood for seventy years, lurking in his sealed-up chamber in the abandoned west wing. Lately he’s been reaching out to the two children of the house, urging them to visit his room, plot against family members, scatter tarot cards around the house, and listen to his hit song, not necessarily in that order.

Earlier this week, under their ancestor’s malign influence, David and Amy tricked Roger into falling down the stairs in the foyer. Concerned, Elizabeth has called in Madame Janet Findley, an exterminator for the already exterminated.

Madame Findley is one of the craziest dames that we’ve seen on Dark Shadows, and that’s getting to be a crowded field. She says surprising things, makes extravagant hand gestures, and goes into a trance at a moment’s notice. I will miss her terribly.

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Episode 646: The Turning

December 1968, Gordon Russell, , , ,

“What we did was bury Quentin’s bones. His spirit is still alive, isn’t it?”

There are eight turning points in the history of Dark Shadows — moments where the focus and direction of the show changes permanently. You can’t really talk about the development of the show without these eight pivotal events.

Four of the turning points are character introductions, and four of them are backstage developments. In order, they are:

  • the introduction of Barnabas,
  • Julia’s offer to cure Barnabas,
  • writer Sam Hall joins the show,
  • the introduction of Angelique,
  • Jonathan Frid’s ten-city publicity tour,
  • writer Ron Sproat leaves the show,
  • the introduction of Quentin,
  • and MGM greenlights House of Dark Shadows.

Today isn’t one of them, by the way. I just thought I’d mention it.

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Episode 645: Spirited Away

December 1968, Gordon Russell, , ,

“We’ll go downstairs, and be ourselves again.”

Henry James’ 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw is one of Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis’ favorite stories. Dan used story elements from the book twice on Dark Shadows, and then he made a TV-movie adaptation in 1974.

It makes sense that Dan was fascinated with this story, because The Turn of the Screw is about one of the major themes of Dan’s career, namely how tedious and irritating governesses can be.

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Episode 644: Phoning It In

December 1968, Ron Sproat, , , , , , , ,

“It doesn’t necessarily mean something.”

David and Amy, two young kids prowling the halls of the enormous haunted house where they live, are currently the subjects of an escalating struggle between two ghosts — Quentin, who wants to lure the children into a sinister scheme, and Magda, who’s trying to protect them. So far, we haven’t actually seen or heard either of these spirits, and there’s still a chance that this might all turn out to be one big misunderstanding.

The kids make their way through a secret passage to the west wing, where Quentin is silently urging them to go. Suddenly, a busted old grandfather clock tips over, and faceplants right in front of them with an unholy clatter.

This could be a symbol of today’s generation trying to avoid being trapped by the fears and prejudices of the past, but it’s probably not. Sometimes a child-endangering poltergeist clock attack is just a child-endangering poltergeist clock attack.

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Episode 642: Mind Over Manners

December 1968, Sam Hall, , , , , , ,

“There’s not much point in being both rude and mysterious.”

Over the last couple of weeks, Christopher Jennings has murdered at least two human beings — I know they were only day players, but even day players are God’s children, presumably — and yet we like Chris, and we let him get away with being really quite skilled at covering up for his ongoing murder spree, because he’s sexy and polite and interesting, and what does that say about us? Probably something terrible.

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Episode 641: Left Behind

December 1968, Sam Hall, , , ,

“I’m positive he’ll give you a sign — a sign for you to forget all of this insanity!”

It’s Monday, and the start of a theme week on Dark Shadows — five straight episodes of ghost stories, featuring three different ghosts. That means a whole lot of windows blowing open, and a whole lot of doors slamming shut.

People will sit around a table, and make sure that their fingers touch. A book will fall off of a piano. A grandfather clock will commit suicide, right in front of us. And there’s a better than average chance that somebody’s going to feel a chill. A CHILL!

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Time Travel, part 4: I Was Just Noticing Your Harpoon Collection

Dan Curtis, Sam Hall, Steve Feke, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“She’s not like other people. She never was.”

Happy Thanksgiving! It’s not actually Thanksgiving for me, and it’s probably not Thanksgiving for you, but it is for the housewives, teenagers, assorted mental cases and inadequately supervised middle schoolers who make up the 1968 Dark Shadows audience.

On pre-emption days, I take a look at the 1991 Dark Shadows revival series, because apparently I don’t know what’s good for me. Here’s the rundown so far:

Episode 1 : Mostly gimmick shots, indoor mist, no clear idea what the purpose or tone of the show should be.

Episode 2 : Mostly about sweat and sexy biting time, including several ideas borrowed from House of Dark Shadows which weren’t even good the first time.

Episode 3 : Hot tentacles stretch upwards.

Okay, is everybody oriented now? Happy Thanksgiving. Let’s begin.

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