This Old House

THE TIME: September 30th, 1966

THE PLACE: Dunderry’s Bookshop and Check Cashing, Anytown USA

THE PRINCIPLES: Eudora Pecksniff, venerable age, studious soap viewer, and Eugenia Spendthrift, austere age, lethargic laywoman

Eugenia: I tell you, Eudora, I never read more bilk in my entire life!

Eudora: I don’t know, Eugenia. There’s nothing I love more than a good mystery.

Eugenia: A real mystery is how that Judith Parsons gets away with these trashy old things.

Eudora: I find that one mystery’s as good as any other. So long as you get to figure out who did it. It’s good for the brain juices.

Eugenia: I’ve enough juices as is. You know about my acid reflux.

Eudora: Take my story for example!

Eugenia: You mean that show with the metal piece?

Eudora: Oh no, my dear, they dealt with the metal piece ages ago.

Eugenia: Moved on to plastics, have they?

Eudora: No, no, Eugenia…murder!

Eugenia: I didn’t think they were allowed to kill people on those soap operas.

Eudora: Not normally, but I suppose they’re trying new things.

Eugenia: Everyone’s trying new things, I suppose, with this country going bum over teakettle.

Eudora: You see, there’s this man that was murdered! Pushed into the sea they think!

Eugenia: Hm?

Eudora: Well, they don’t know if he was pushed yet. They don’t even know it was a murder!

Eugenia: Just happened, did it?

Eudora: Oh, no, they found the body last month.

Eugenia: And they still don’t know he was murdered?

Eudora: Well, a few people think he was. And I think it’s quite clear who did it, at any rate.

Eugenia: If you’ve figured it out, I don’t doubt it.

Eudora: Anyway, I have no doubt they’ll straighten it out by Christmas.

Eugenia: Why do you keep up with these silly television programs, Eudora? I declare.

Eudora: Well, it’s like watching other people figure out what you already have. It makes you feel awfully clever.

Eugenia: And, of course, I’m always waiting for that ghost to come back.

Eudora: The what?

———————————————————————————————————

Ah, Dark Shadows, the show that must constantly reevaluate what it’s about in a desperate attempt to build an audience.

The mystery of Bill Malloy’s death has now gone on 20 episodes spanning a month of content, and very little beyond the most basic of information has been relayed concerning suspects, alibis and motives. The whole thing feels as though it should be open-and-shut to us, but it’s been a challenge for more than a few characters within the show to even admit the man was murdered in the first place.

In the meantime, other story arcs that have been with us even longer have stalled. Carolyn and Joe have no new relationship developments, they’re just where they were before Episode 50. Victoria has learned something possibly connected to her past, but it hasn’t been elaborated on in two weeks. As for Burke, his revenge has now mutated to encompass his search for Malloy’s murderer, with all his other plans put to the wayside.

And then there’s the matter of that book opening on its own 18 episodes ago. What the hell was that about?

So here, at the end of its 14^th week, Dark Shadows begins, again, to reexamine what it wants to be, in so doing putting things in motion that will come to define what this show is.

This isn’t the first time Victoria’s monologue has seen fit to remind us how old Collinwood is. In this episode, however, a point is given for this, to answer a question nobody asked, in a way that will…

Well, I already used the words “define” and “reevaluate”. It’s a way that will…mean something. Let’s go with that.

So Victoria goes to see Elizabeth, having changed her hair again, swapping the cool bun out for her usual brunette curtain.

There is a very ominous overtone to this beginning. David apparently told Vicky Elizabeth wanted to see her. Liz instructs Vicky to close the door, makes sure David is nowhere near, and cautions…

It’s all very mysterious and exciting. The knowledge that this is a Friday episode also further piques interest. Will Liz make some big revelation? Will Victoria finally learn the connection she has to Collinwood?

Sorry.

It’s just Elizabeth thanking Vicky for confirming Roger’s alibi last night. That’s all. It’s nothing new, and it certainly doesn’t merit the weight it is given.

If anything, this conversation is indicative of an important development in the dynamics at Collinwood.

Vicky’s answer to this is boring and unchanged, but the fact is that Liz called her Vicky. Roger also has started calling her by her nickname, even if it is so he can butter her up ahead of seeing her fall. By now, everybody in the household save for David and Matthew, are calling Vicky, not by the professional title “Miss Winters”, but by her nickname.

She’s been in Collinwood seven days, and she has finally earned the trust of the household. For Elizabeth, that trust seems to have been earned with Vicky’s defense (however lukewarm) of Roger in Episode 66. And, maybe, a little by their heart-to-heart in that same episode, in which Liz seemed genuinely distressed to learn just how lonely Victoria had been as a child.

This pleasant moment is interrupted by the sound of violence and struggle from the next room.

Matthew caught David spying at the door. David, naturally, claims he has just been assaulted. Nobody, naturally, believes him.

‘Young limb’. Sure.

Elizabeth seems very exhausted by this whole ordeal and dismisses the whole thing, sending Vicky and David off. Matthew, however, stays behind.

What the Christ, this time?

Meanwhile, David goes on at great length about what a major dick Matthew is and how he and all the spirits of the earth can’t stand his grotesque mug.

Heh, ghosts. Remember those?

It’s old news that David communes (or thinks he communes) with the spirits of the Widows said to haunt the hill named for them. He continues to claim that certain things (most explicitly the graffiti Vicky found on her mirror the night she and Carolyn found Malloy’s body) were done, not by him, but by those Widows.

But what we get here is the most explicit description yet of the kind of paranormal activity David believes goes on at Collinwood, complete with a physical (metaphysical?) description and something resembling a personality.

David even offers to show Victoria a picture. I like that they can only bond when he’s attempting to show off his dead friends. Victoria, still trying her best to engage this child’s friendship, agrees and goes off with him.

Back in the ass-end of the episode, we are immediately disappointed to learn Matthew has no new information and is just telling Elizabeth about how he almost killed Burke last night, something she already knows, but he didn’t know she knows.

You have to give him credit. At least he owns his shit.

I like how she and Sheriff Patterson adopt the exact same ‘underpaid school official’ manner when dealing with the commission of serious crimes. Besides Matthew already getting away with taking the law into his own hands by disposing of Malloy’s body, this whole thing sounds very hollow coming from a woman who used her local clout to keep the police from apprehending her nephew for trying to kill her brother.

So, listen, this is exactly what Liz did in suppository times. It’s the same fucking thing. But what Matthew did is bad becausee…er…he’s ugly and stupid, I guess. Seriously, they lean into him being a rash, brutish monster and everybody seems surprised at the notion that he can think for himself. But when Liz and Burke take matters into their own hands, they’re treated as efficient, or powerful, or clever. Sure, Burke got chastised for his vigilante act, but the narrative wants us to vindicate him.

Is there a message here about how society treats the…er…less physically endowed? Are we supposed to think about this?

Probably not.

I’ll be sure to remember that.

Vicky and David intercept Matthew as he leaves the drawing room. Vicky shows him the picture David drew of his ghost friend, the Woman in White. Matthew seems to recognize it, and immediately turns his attention to David.

The…Old House? Isn’t this one 130 years old?

Victoria wonders what this Old House is and, true to form, Matthew simply says it’s dangerous and that she shouldn’t ever go poking around there.

Victoria continues her investigation, bringing the picture to Mrs. Stoddard herself. Liz also seems to recognize it, leading the young seekers to a familiar marbled book on the piano.

Liz opens the book to the one page it seems to have, holding the picture up to the book illustration for comparison.

Liz even remarks that the two pictures are “very much alike”, but they really aren’t. For one, the Book!Josette is depicted in profile with her hair up, and not wearing a wedding veil. For another, David’s picture sucks. I mean, it adheres more to the “crude and childish” style Vicky used to describe the gorgeous charcoal sketch of Collinwood David was said to have done that they really swapped from Sam’s studio.

In any case, this is a picture of Josette Collins, miserable dead bride of the man who built Collinwood, the same woman who is said to be the source of the odd weeping Vicky has occasionally heard in the night. We must also presume that it was Josette who opened the book to the page bearing her name, maybe because she likes reading about herself, who can say.

Liz wonders if David copied the picture from the book, and he says he didn’t, even though we saw him studying the picture two episodes ago, you’d think he’d have used it as a reference.

Not to be a pedant, but I object to the phrase “real live ghost” for a number of reasons.

Elizabeth finally explains to us what the Old House is in the most infuriating way possible.

Oh, well, that explains it.

So the reason this info drop seems so random and sudden is that it is. On the list of odd spooky places (the sealed off wing, the basement, the locked room in the basement…), nobody ever mentioned an odd spooky house somewhere on the property.

The introduction of the Old House is the first major change in the series’s lore. All other inconsistencies and retcons to this point have been minor, temporary, or easily explained by one writer forgetting or ignoring details set by the other.

But the Old House is a whole new animal.

On the one hand, it makes sense that the venerable Collins family had to live somewhere before Jeremiah built Collinwood for his bride 130 years ago, so it isn’t out of left field prior Collins ancestors would have an estate somewhere.

Though it won’t stop being funny that this show had the perfect set up for a haunted house within its main setting, but decided for whatever reason to make up a totally different haunted house, as if the first one wasn’t spooky enough.

So Carolyn shows up, back from her week-long voyage of reaffirming random facts with people and harassing her boyfriend. No mention is made of that dinner date she was supposed to have with Joe, so maybe she put him off after humiliating him at the office.

That isn’t important, though.

And Vicky…agrees. She really does agree to accompany her charge to a weird abandoned ruin in the woods she just learned existed so that he can show her the ghost he talks to.

We talk a lot of shit about Victoria Winters on this blog, but she at the very least is invested in her terrible job.

Back in the ass-end, Carolyn sets about her mission of convincing her mother to hire an old age assistant.

Strong opening. Sure to win the old lady over.

Carolyn points out that ever since Roger and David showed up two months and change ago, there’s been a lot of work around the house, and the combined efforts of the household women aren’t enough to cope with this one grown man and this one small boy.

And they don’t explicitly say that, but Carolyn does use Roger and David jumping off point, and Liz does counter by saying she does have help: Carolyn and Vicky, neatly separating the family along gender lines.

Here we go.

And, yes, Carolyn thinks (thanks to Burke) that this is her own idea and she’s doing something very nice for somebody, but she frames it like her mother just Doesn’t Have What She Used To.

So Act II ends pretty early, at the nine minute mark. And when Act III begins, we’ve gone from afternoon…

And there’s a reason for this: in this episode, we are emphasizing atmospherics over plot progression. As with Day 5, which was capped off by the dramatic discovery of Malloy’s body, so too is Day 7 heavily abbreviated by the standards of this show, going from morning to night in less than a week.

Because, quite simply, Dark Shadows wants to close out this week with a bang.

Carolyn spots Vicky and David as they prepare to leave.

And then David drags Vicky off by the arm, all “I’ll take care of her”, and it is very cute.

Carolyn brings the tea to her mother who is wearing that badass housecoat again.

Carolyn brings up the housekeeper business again, which Liz even acknowledges is weird since, in-universe, it’s been a few hours since the last time they spoke about it.

This time, Carolyn explicitly names Mrs. Johnson, framing it as how she only just thought of her. It’s an odd deception, especially since the entire selling point is how Carolyn feels they could help her for Malloy’s sake. I have to assume the only reason for the delay is to kill time in an episode entirely dedicated to that goal.

This is the worst kind of emotional manipulation. Burke must be rubbing off.

Ahem.

So we next return to the big deal: the journey to the Old House, accompanied by scores of location footage.

This episode easily has the most location footage of any to this point, and will remain that way for a while. This footage of Vicky and David walking through the woods is part of the second generation of location footage, along with the already twice-used “Roger goes to work” stuff.

This footage is also unique because it required dialogue and, because of this, Alex Moltke and David Henesy had to dub their lines over the film.

The words are very tinny and noticeably out of place. Aside from that, this is very good footage. The way Vicky pauses and cranes her neck to look over the trees reminds me of an illustration in one of the Narnia books.

We cut to the newest of our establishing shots. The Old House at last.

We’ll never see any establishing shot more than the Collinwood ones that open every episode, but we end up seeing a lot of the Old House shot.

One thing we immediately notice is that it looks very…Classical, with those Doric columns and that curved roof in front. Very plantation house chic. I guess we’re supposed to believe it was built at some point in the 18^th century, since Isaac Collins founded Collinsport in 1690, and presumably needed some time to build his fortune up. Its outward resemblance to such buildings may then make sense.

Let’s talk about shadows.

That is creepy as hell. Two shadowy figures walking by an otherwise perfectly still canvas, all while that same, eerie music cue loops in the background. It’s old and fusty but it’s even more unnerving for all that.

A point is made of showing how immense the house is as they get closer and closer to it and the whole looming, dark structure appears to swallow them up.

So, David and Vicky enter the Old House, the first new set since the studio change, and one of the most significant in the entire series run, eventually to rival the Collinwood foyer/drawing room combo for supremacy.

The general aesthetic of the Old House is that it’s a major mess. Sy Tomashoff and his crew had carte blanche to build a big, ornate set, beat it with sticks, and cover it with fake cobwebs. Enter the Dark Shadows aesthete.

There’s something very silly about this. I mean, it’s very elementary grade haunted house stuff, and the show has been milking banging shutters for scares since the first week. But the magnitude of this moment, the fact that we have just been introduced to this new place and given this new information about David’s ghost friend, gives the implication this is different. That something momentous is about to happen.

And there’s also how slowly everything is moving. The real reason Act 2 ended so early was so Act III could busy itself with dramatic build-up. We get the slow march Vicky and David take to the Old House, the way Vicky explores the set on arriving. Then there’s a whole stretch of silence in which David lights a candle before we fade back to the outside of the house.

You go from that long, quiet stretch with the only sound being the whistling of the wind to this sharp sting cord (courtesy of Bob Cobert’s always-effective score) and there’s this bright light moving through the shadows toward the house. A figure carrying a lantern, steadily approaching with the house’s inmates none the wiser.

David places the candle on the mantelpiece over which, as at Collinwood, there is a portrait.

Victoria recognizes her as Josette Collins. David calls her, simply, “the lady in white”.

It’s odd that a painting of Josette would hang in the Old House, when Collinwood was explicitly built as a wedding present for her. The actual explanation for this is that they hadn’t thought of the Old House when they came up with the show, and we needed to have a painting of Josette somewhere for…

Reasons.

David shares an important detail the ghost of Josette apparently entrusted him with.

Tough breaks. Did the second girl to die at the bottom of Widows’ Hill get the same deal? They’ve been very stingy telling us anything about her except that she and Vicky have the same job.

The emphasis that it was a girl reaffirm that Malloy cannot be part of that ancient prophecy because, well…he wasn’t. And, as Patterson and Burke discussed a while ago, Malloy would’ve had to have gone into the water somewhere else, and only washed up at Widows’ Hill later.

This, more importantly, leaves open what has been implied since the beginning: that Victoria Winters is in grave danger of being the third girl. The new detail is that her death would ensure Josette’s freedom.

This, for the first time, adds a level of malevolence to the nebulous ghosts of Collinwood. Sure, it’s scary to hear about them and their crying and sad backstories, but nothing we’ve ever heard about them to this point suggest they are dangerous forces, just sad, Josette in particular.

But if Josette has a vested interest in seeing somebody die, does this mean that things might soon get dicey for our little governess?

Also, it’s kind of funny that David flatly admits to Vicky that he only showed her the Old House so that Josette could size her up and see how likely she was to fall off a cliff.

Anyway, then they hear some spooky creaking noises outside the house.

More location footage of the figure approaching the Old House, including this stunning visual.

And by now it’s fairly obvious who this is. Besides that we’ve already met our quota for five characters in the episode, there was only one grown man among them and he has a very distinctive silhouette.

So it’s Matthew and nobody is surprised. He continues his transformation into a Scooby Doo character by heavily warning Vicky to stay away from what is quite literally an Old Dark House. I mean, Collinwood was already that, but it was getting too comfortable.

I enjoy David putting this brutish giant in his place. The child knows no fear.

We now learn that Matthew doesn’t like this spooky place.

And David doesn’t like this.

Sorry. Bold of me to assume Matthew earns a paycheck.

We head back to the ass end for the third and final time.

And that’s what happens. That’s it. The only thing of note is that Carolyn says that, with Malloy gone, Mrs. Johnson must be “almost like a widow” now.

And besides being kind of a gross thing to say on its own, she says this to her mother, who appears to have been in a perpetual state of mourning since her husband disappeared a year before Carolyn was even born.

But, yeah, whatever, Liz agrees to hire her only friend’s weird horny maid and as great as that is for Carolyn’s self-esteem, Burke’s plan, and Mrs. Johnson’s zealous fanbase (i.e.: Me), I can’t help but be disinterested only because of the insane fucking things about to happen in a few minutes’ time.

Our house/Is a very, very, very Old House…

Matthew ushers the others out of house and on their merry way. Victoria suggests she and David can come back another time, but David waves this off, reminding us that ghosts don’t like Matthew because he smells or whatever.

And they’re gone.

But there are four minutes left.

A soft, somewhat mystical music cue plays on what may as well be (and, er, well, is) a still photograph of the set. We linger here for a while, this weird unease building.

It happens so slowly, so subtly, that you’d be forgiven for thinking you imagined it.

But it gets brighter and brighter and eventually, a shape appears before the painting.

With what we must describe as a torturous slowness, the silver figure descends the mantelpiece as if walking down the stairs. She’s wearing a wedding dress and a veil, and there is no mistake about just who and what she is.

It’s been a long time coming.

It’s been 18 episodes since the invisible hand opened the Collins genealogy to Josette’s name and picture in what was the first explicitly supernatural occurrence on Dark Shadows. That was tucked away, hidden at the end of the third, rather than fourth act, and on a Tuesday episode to boot.

But now, on its first Friday since the end of its initial 13 week cycle, Dan Curtis decides to make the supernatural overt. We’re not just getting hints that this place is haunted.

It is. And we’ve got a real live ghost to prove it.

The effect is…well, it’s good. It’s not something like what you’d seen on primetime in scifi shows like Star Trek and The Time Tunnel, but for a daytime television show to do something as insane as show its audience a ghost walking out of a painting was (and, in many ways, still is) insanely bold.

We then fade to more location footage showing Josette outside the Old House.

In many ways, the crappy camera quality and piss poor lighting work to the benefit. It’s scary. Like those old pictures of weird hooded women appearing on rooftops during Soviet holiday festivals. It’s cheap and unconvincing, but that makes it eerier. The bright white figure moving in the perfect darkness, the columns tilted at an odd angle by the positioning of the camera, making it look like Josette is wandering through some alien landscape rather than the grounds of an old manor house.

Less convincing is the very last bit where Josette gets clear of the patio and starts twirling around like she hasn’t a care in the world.

This is when the cops show up and arrest Dan Curtis and crew for loitering.

So…yeah. Dark Shadows is a show with ghosts. It’ll take a while for the characters to catch on, but…

We’re there now. No going back.

This Day in History- Friday, September 30, 1966

The Republic of Botswana gains independence from the United Kingdom. It remains the oldest democracy in Africa.

Behind the Scenes Shenanigans

She isn’t credited as such, but Josette Collins is played here by none other than our very own Kathryn Leigh Scott. Besides further evidence of how far she’s come from playing that wise-cracking waitress in the beehive wig, this was really the result of ambition and keen observation. KLS observed the original effect that would be used to portray the Woman in White and pointed out it looked pretty cheap, which led to Dan Curtis deciding she could play the ghost.

And she did, no doubt having no idea what she was getting herself into.

Another note is that Art Wallace is credited as writer this episode, despite Francis Swann writing the previous episodes throughout the week. This may be an inconsistency brought about by the use of the scrolling credits which, unless I have forgotten something, have not yet been used in episodes explicitly written by Swann. It’s kind of hard to tell whether any specific writer has a mark on this episode, since it has a fairly thin script, dialogue wise. Still, it’s nice to imagine Wallace had a role in the introduction of such important lore to the show whose bible he wrote.