Tag Archives: the head

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.

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Episode 1176: The Week Between

December 1970, Sam Hall, , , , ,

“I dream about her only because I hate her!”

Cockney mentalist Leticia Faye dashes into the drawing room of the sumptuously-appointed Rose Cottage, making a beeline for Flora with a bulletin from the courthouse.

“Oh, Flora!” she sobs, plunging into the woman’s arms.

Startled, Flora cries, “Tell me what’s happened!”

Leticia tries to pull herself together. “It’s Desmond!”

“What about my son?” Flora asks, and that’s how you know it’s Christmas.

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Episode 1142: The Golden Moment

November 1970, Sam Hall, , , , , , ,

“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.

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Episode 1139: Nothing on Earth

Gordon Russell, November 1970, , ,

“There’s nothing on earth that can keep us together, or apart!”

Well, here we go again. The legendary head of Judah Zachery has detached once more from the legendary neck, and is now on display in the bedroom of Gerard Stiles, who happened to have a severed-head display case in his closet, just gathering dust. This is why you shouldn’t throw anything away; you never know when you might need it. In fact, that’s pretty much the guiding principle of the show these days.

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Episode 1131: The Perils of Memory

October 1970, Sam Hall, , , , , , , , ,

“You cannot escape from the dead!”

It’s one of those complex evenings. In a secret underground crypt near Gallows Hill, a Cockney music hall performer with psychic powers places a tall glass case on an outcropping that contains a severed human head. It’s a terrible thing, the head, and it’s taken control of her senses.

The corpse in the corner grows restless. It rises, and approaches its long-gone head, grasping for its return. The head opens its long-dead eyes, and glares at the mentalist. They’re eager to be reunited, head to body.

“No, you must wait,” the woman says to the headless fiend, taking its cold hands in hers. “It is not time yet.”

Parking the body a few feet away, she looks to the head for instructions. “Now you must tell me, master,” she breathes. “What more is to be done?” They lock eyes, and merge minds.

“Yes, someone must help us,” she nods. “Someone very special. I understand, master.” Then she puts a velvet bag over the case, like it’s a parakeet cage.

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Episode 1129: Windmills, and How to Tilt at Them

Gordon Russell, October 1970, ,

“Each time it reappears, murders follow in its wake!”

Well, this is what happens when you try to un-inevitable the inevitable; shit gets messy. Time-climbing ghostbusters Barnabas Collins and Julia Hoffman have peeled back the layers of the fourth dimension, visiting the undiscovered country of 1840 in order to avert a tragedy that they know perfectly well is going to happen a hundred and thirty years from now, right in front of their faces.

Their plan is to figure out how everything got this way in the first place, and then use that knowledge to make it not happen the way that it’s currently happening before it happens, which it already has. So it’s not going that well.

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Episode 1127: The Unexplainable Happenings

October 1970, Sam Hall, , ,

“You accept the fact of unexplainable happenings!”

Well, this is just typical. A young man awakens an ancient horror and sets it loose to prowl the countryside and spread havoc and despair, and as soon as he’s done it, he decides he didn’t mean it and he wants to take it back. I guess there were irresponsible millennials back in the nineteenth century too, eating avocado toast and not buying houses.

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Episode 1125: Things You Say to Otis Greene, Deceased

Gordon Russell, October 1970, , , ,

“What does it all mean? Why did you have to die before you could tell me?”

I kept telling them, death is only an extension of life. Then I killed them. Even then, they didn’t really get it. I guess it’s one of those jokes that’s only funny from one direction.

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Episode 1123: Jay-Z

Gordon Russell, October 1970, ,

“Tonight I have finally met the man I am going to kill.”

He is the greatest single threat that the Collins family has ever encountered, the Big Bad magnified to the status of Big Worst. He is the man behind the curtain that you should not pay attention to, because if you get close, he’ll sear the flesh from your bones with the cleansing power of his unending hatred for everything in the universe, up to and including you.

The Catholic Church hated him so much that they murdered him, and then put his head on public display, so that everyone would know the true face of evil. And even his head — now stored in a see-through Tupperware container and hidden behind the draperies in the very room where you currently stand — even his head has the power to screw up your afternoon to a pretty devastating extent.

At least, that’s what I’m told. For all I know, this refugee from the antiques roadshow is just another dime-store decapitation, cluttering up the credenza.

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