Tag Archives: mausoleum

Episode 430: Dark Conquest

Ron Sproat, , , , , ,

“I can feel neither love nor hate. I feel nothing now.”

Last week, Barnabas was planning to kill his fiancee, Josette, and turn her into a vampire. Instead, she fled from him, and jumped off the cliff at Widow’s Hill to a messy death on the rocks below. Not satisfied with that level of carnage, Barnabas came up with a whole new plan yesterday — he’s going to use his powers to call Josette back from the grave.

“I have made my own dark conquest of the grave,” he said. “Hers will be next.”

Now, I know the show is called Dark Shadows, but they’re really taking that super seriously at this point. The main character has been moping around in a graveyard for weeks, and I don’t see the situation getting a hell of a lot happier. I mean, at a certain point, either your show is going to do a two-part episode at Disney World or it’s not.

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Episode 429: Destruction, Everywhere

February 1968, Ron Sproat, , , ,

“Josette is dead! How DARE you dig her grave!”

Hey, guess what: Barnabas wakes up and gets out of his coffin, and he’s in kind of a bad mood. I know, news flash, right? I’ll give you a second to catch your breath.

To be fair, it’s been a rough week. Barnabas was planning to murder his fiancee Josette, and then somebody else came along and murdered her first, but in totally the wrong way. It’s a frustrating situation.

So he roars out of bed at a hundred miles an hour, just bouncing off the mausoleum walls and shouting, “Destruction, that’s all I want! Destruction, everywhere! Death! BLOOD!” This is how we start Dark Shadows episodes now. It ramps up from here.

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Episode 426: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

February 1968, Sam Hall, , , , , , , , ,

“The more one learns, the worse one feels. I did not realize life was like that. But probably it is a well-known fact that no one bothered to tell me.”

There’s big news from the royal family, as usual. They think that just because they’re rich and powerful, that means they’ve got a patent on the epic tragedy — although to be fair, they usually do. Regular people don’t poison each other and throw themselves off cliffs; they just don’t have the time.

So here’s the top headlines: Barnabas, Prince of Collinsport, killed his uncle Jeremiah in a duel. Barnabas was then killed by his own wife, the witch Angelique, and cursed with eternal life. After dispatching Angelique, Barnabas courted his dead uncle’s wife, Josette, and planned to make her his vampire bride.

On Friday — confused and frightened by a vision created by the ghost of Angelique — Josette rejected the undead Prince, and killed herself by jumping from the cliff on Widow’s Hill. It’s basically a cross between Hamlet, Macbeth and the juicier episodes of Dynasty, as directed by George Romero.

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Episode 419: Lose My Number

February 1968, Gordon Russell, , , ,

“I will not let you do what you would have to do to be with me.”

We’re in the Collins family mausoleum again today, for literally the sixth day in a row. It’s been nine months since we opened the mystery box and unleashed the vampire on the world of Dark Shadows, and we’ve now reached the stage where the show is almost entirely graveyard-based. I remember the days when people on this show had homes to go to.

Josette’s tracked down her ex-boyfriend Barnabas, who died recently and doesn’t seem to be committed to making their relationship work anymore.

“I beg you,” he says. “If you love me, then go. Forget you saw me. Remember this only as a terrible dream.”

I think we’ve all had conversations like that, haven’t we, where the other person just won’t accept that it’s over? Somebody needs to buy Josette a copy of He’s Just Not That Into Biting You.

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Episode 417: Too Soon

January 1968, Ron Sproat, , , , , , , ,

“What if last night happens all over again?”

Today’s episode begins with a reprise of yesterday’s strange anti-cliffhanger, where the psychotic monster who’s been terrorizing the people of Collinsport for the last nine months talks his best friend into driving a stake through his heart.

“No matter what you are, no matter what you done,” Ben tells the vampire, “you’ve been my friend.”

“Think of it this way, Ben,” Barnabas says. “You’ll be performing an act of friendship. My destruction will be the only way to save me, my only salvation.”

Barnabas also tells Ben to make sure he helps Vicki escape from jail. After that, Ben should take some money and start a new life, somewhere far away from here.

Ben says he’ll never forget Barnabas, and Barnabas adds, “If you do remember me — remember what was good about me, as I hope others will.”

And oh my god, can you stop micromanaging this whole experience? I’ve never seen someone backseat driving their own suicide like this.

Continue reading Episode 417: Too Soon →

Episode 416: Stone Cold

January 1968, Ron Sproat, , , , ,

“Why wouldn’t you let me bury them in the earth?”

As we open a new week on Dark Shadows, Joshua comes home from a business trip and finds Naomi in the drawing room, hip-deep in sherry.

He responds as he always does, with bitter sarcasm. “Well, I’m happy to see you up and busy at such an early hour,” he growls. “This was well worth the whole night’s journey, to be welcomed by this charming bit of domesticity.”

Naomi looks off into the distance.

“A little bird flew to the window,” she says, so apparently it’s going to be one of those conversations. “It hovered there for a moment, and then flew away. The first bird of the morning.”

This newsflash from the aviary is Naomi’s way of leading up to the breaking news story — on Friday, their little daughter Sarah died of pneumonia.

Wait, Sarah’s dead? God damn it, did somebody let her get outside again? We have got to start locking the front door, and this time I mean it.

Continue reading Episode 416: Stone Cold →

Episode 411: Other People’s Blood

Gordon Russell, January 1968, , , , , , , ,

“That’s what happened to me, isn’t it? I was in that coffin because I was dead.”

It always starts with a box.

The local nobility are up to their usual tricks — keeping secrets, shooting each other, sleeping with the help, generally making a nuisance of themselves — and it comes back to haunt them, as it always does.

So here we are, opening another mystery box, and something terrible is loosed upon the world again, for the first time.

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Episode 410: Nightfall

January 1968, Sam Hall, , ,

“I want you to cut down a holly tree, and fashion a small stake from the trunk.”

The widow Collins draws her shawl close around her, regarding her late husband’s final resting place with a shudder. She has no friends now, and no place to go. All she’s got is a small suitcase carrying a few dresses, plus a bankbook worth a small fortune. Oh, and a big hammer, and a pointy stick. And a problem.

And she finally asks the question that the viewing public has been waiting to hear for more than nine months, namely:

“Do you know the word vampire, Ben?”

Vampire? Now that you mention it, that does ring a bell. Dude in a coffin, right?

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Episode 361: The One Where Julia Loses Her Mind

November 1967, Ron Sproat, , , , , , , , , , ,

“Blood… oozing through the wall! Where’s it coming from? What does it mean?”

This is the beginning of an important week for Dark Shadows, as we lead up to one of the all-time great storyline twists in soap opera history. In fact, the upcoming story is so bizarre that they aired a special promotional announcement to warn the audience that it was coming.

In the 25-second bumper, Vicki is filmed against a stark black background, looking off into the distance with her typical dazed expression. They play one of those rising-tension music cues, made of strings, kettle drums and reverb.

An announcer says, “This Friday, you and Victoria Winters begin a strange and terrifying journey into the past, back to the year 1795, to discover the origins of this man,” — Barnabas, posing against the darkness — “and the secret of the chained coffin.” The scene fades on a shot of his hand resting on the coffin.

They don’t actually say, “Oh, by the way, it’s Dark Shadows,” or the time slot or anything. They don’t have to. What else could this possibly be?

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Episode 360: Crazy Lady on the Loose

November 1967, Ron Sproat, , , , , ,

“Don’t start imagining a lot of things just because someone we barely know is acting peculiar.”

All week, I’ve been talking about Sam Hall, the new writer who just joined the show. He wrote the last three episodes, and now he passes the baton back to Ron Sproat, who tends to be lackluster and frustrating. And today, just to prove the point, Sproat turns in a script that appears to be made mostly of reconstituted episode parts. Damn it, Sproat! Get it together.

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