The Ghost Talks

“My name is Victoria Winters”…

“The night drags on, and still there is no recourse from my imprisonment here.”

“Perhaps I will begin to wonder what those newspapers taste like. Dry and papery, perhaps. And yet still more filling than the empty loneliness of these passing hours…”

Oh, hi. You caught me trying out a new bit.

So, yeah, it’s the end of Dark Shadows’ 17^th week, and for the first time, the heroine’s life is in actual danger.

Now, I know it isn’t a sexy immediate danger like being attacked or in a car crash, or a hostage during a terrorist plot the head writer ripped out of 24, but there’s a special kind of…terror about Victoria Winters’s plight here.

When I was about, like, six, I accidentally locked myself in a disused room of my grandmother’s house. This is the same grandmother who got me into soaps, so say a little prayer to St. Anthony to thank her for this hot ass content you’ve been reading.

Gran wasn’t far away while I was locked up, but the door was thick, and she was vacuuming. Very loudly. And she never did hear very well. One of the reasons I knew soaps so well was because she’d be blasting The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful at decibel-splitting levels every afternoon. You couldn’t escape it.

Anyway, I can’t remember how long I was trapped in there. And I say “trapped”, but really if I had used my brain I would’ve remembered there was a back door with a latch in that room. Anyway, I was six and terrified, screaming for help, and she couldn’t hear me and it’s probably a good thing she’s gone to Jesus because this story makes us both look very bad.

If you can stop laughing for five seconds, you might realize this is a very frightening thing. Being locked up somewhere, not sure if other people know where you are or are coming to get you. Transplant the setting to a disused room in a closed off wing of an old, dark house, and things only get worse.

This is a very sophisticated, yet still primal, kind of terror. Vicky isn’t being menaced by a murderer or a monster. Indeed, her peril isn’t immediately certain. But if nobody comes to get her…it will be. It becomes, then, a matter of time.

And there’s nothing she can do. Her fate is outside her own power.

Which it kinda has been this whole time, this is just the first time it’s been spooky.

But try as she might, nobody’s going to hear her. She’s on her own, willfully abandoned by the child she came here to teach, and unknowingly abandoned by even those members of the household to whom she has become a friend.

And, on top of that, soon to be abandoned by the very writer who created her and the world she lives in.

Sidenote: if you think I’m going to attempt grandeur with Francis Swann’s when it finally comes, you’ve got another thing coming, buster.

Vicky, being trapped and alone, doesn’t really get her own share of the action this episode. Instead, we return to Liz’s muumuu and Carolyn’s newest ‘do.

So, Carolyn hates Joe right after deciding she loved him again, because in between the last time she told him she hated him and her deciding to love him again, he made alternate dinner plans with a girl, so now she’s decided to vamp herself up and pick up guys at the local Denny’s at 1:00 AM, like a sensible young woman.

Last episode, Elizabeth told Carolyn that she was right to snap at her earlier, and also that she generally thinks she’s a capable young person with whom she is often pleased.

Thankfully, she has come to her senses.

Carolyn claims Joe intentionally let her debase herself with her “speech” only to then tell her he had another date. And I know I’m the biggest Joe Haskell supremacist on the Internet (where’s my medal?), but would it have been better if Joe had shut her up first? Or not even come to Collinwood to talk to her face-to-face at all? Of course, in either of those eventualities, Carolyn wouldn’t have had to indulge in a theatrical performance, so…there’s that.

And, indeed, that’s what this seems to be about.

God, Joan Bennett is so frigging good in these scenes, and those from last episode too.

Liz then makes the cogent point that, whatever the truth of Joe’s dinner date with this nameless girl might be, Carolyn isn’t exactly in a good position to act spurned here.

Again, Carolyn’s desperate pursuit of Burke, crashing his business meeting, and totally debasing herself for the sake of an afternoon flirtation, remains the most shameless thing any woman on this program has yet done.

Except, I guess, that business with Liz and David, but that’s shameless in a different way.

Where’s my Roaring 20s-set Bisexual Elizabeth Liz spin-off?

In another beautifully subtle flourish from the big guy, Liz accuses Carolyn of “thinking [her] world is coming to an end” because Joe for once wasn’t immediately available to her. Astute viewers would know that Joe frequently uses language surrounding the “end of the world” to describe his increasingly dismal prospects with Carolyn.

Now, it would appear she’s gotten a taste of her own medicine.

So, this is one of the best episodes of the series. We have this heightened, soapy melodrama, the mother and daughter clashing over the latter’s recklessness, with Liz putting a voice to criticisms the viewer has surely had watching the course of Carolyn’s arc these past 85 episodes. Both actresses are in top form, Joan Bennett putting in a nearly word-perfect performance, and Nancy Barrett getting to show the teeth and fire that so attracted her to the character of Carolyn in the first place.

This drama is juxtaposed with the grim terror of Vicky sealed away in the east wing, a horror movie character literally trapped in a soap opera, the soap characters totally unaware of her plight.

And then there’s a third element, in Collinsport, at everybody’s favorite watering hole.

This is more of that new crop of location footage. There’s an interview where Dan Curtis describes the location footage they shot early on (seeming to be referring to preproduction), and he mentions “the actor who played Sam Evans stumbling out of the Blue Whale”. He later points out that most of the footage they shot was never used and, so, presumably is lost. It’s true we never see any footage of Sam drunkenly stumbling out of the Blue Whale. And I’m not sure if he’d forgotten Dave Ford’s name (the actor himself would have regrettably passed on some years before that particular interview was shot), or if this was an allusion to the first Sam, played by the unfortunate Mark Allen.

Anyway, nonsequitor over, back to all the reasons this episode is good.

So Burke is drowning his sorrows. It turns out, by the way, that Mitch Ryan is very good at playing drunk. He had, of course, plenty of experience.

Sam ignores Burke, going on to the payphone.

Every actor in this episode is doing what they do best in the very best way. Joan Bennett is the prim, cold, righteously angry matron. Nancy Barrett the fiery, unstable romantic. Mitch Ryan, the great titan in a moment of rare vulnerability. Dave Ford, the irrepressibly charming and philosophical picture of geniality.

Alexandra Moltke gets to scream a lot, but…well, she does it well.

Maggie tells Sam about Joe coming over to dinner tonight, and he has a brief moment of concern. You might remember the implication during the miracle that was Episode 78 that Sam is worried about Maggie and Joe being together because of Joe’s connection to the Collinses. This is furthered here, with Sam wondering if this is a good idea.

Regardless, our girl will not be moved, and Sam relents. As he prepares to leave, he is stopped by Burke.

Burke promises not to say a word about Malloy’s death. He only wants someone to talk to. A friend. And Sam finds he cannot say no.

What we get here is a very human side of Burke Devlin. We’ve seen him…not dickish, occasionally, in those few instances when he expresses concern, sympathy and even a desire to help Victoria. But even then, he usually is in control of the situation, the guy with the cards. Here, disheveled and drunk, appealing to none other than the town alcoholic, he seems pathetic…sad.

It’s probably best not to ponder why the events of this in-universe day have driven him to drink more than, say, the previous one. Hell, Burke being drunk might’ve offered a pretense of an explanation for him going to Collinwood and telling everybody about his plans. Still, we’re here now, and here is a good place to be.

There is a beautiful intimacy to all this. Burke, miserable and drunk, still attempting to efface his usual manner of grandiosity, while Sam sizes him up, puffing that pipe of his.

This is gonna be another of those episodes where I quote almost the whole script because it’s that good.

So, Burke has been in Collinsport nine days and is finally beginning to realize he has no friends in the place he once called his home.

Oh, joy. First the Civil War, and now it’s time to Both Sides the Crusades! Although not really. I guess once you’ve already denigrated an entire side of the conflict as “heathens”, there’s no room to make things black and white.

Burke’s comparison to himself as a Crusader comes from him wondering if the Crusaders were lonely men, which allows Sam to answer the question with much more gravity than it by all rights deserves.

And if Burke is a crusader…which of those categories does he fit into it? It’s not a stretch to say Burke has been, and is, all of them at one time or another. The rakish, globe-trotting adventurer, the ambitious, if megalomaniacal dreamer, the greedy corporatist bent on control through capital…

And a fanatic, obsessed to the point of distraction with the destruction of one family he blames for the entire sorry course of his life.

Jesus, this is actually sad. I feel pity. For Burke Devlin. What kind of Twilight Zone bullshit is this?

Burke admits he’s been sitting around and wondering…

And now, for the first time, Burke shows an indication he may have doubts about his revenge plan. Think of it: he has no reason to believe Malloy isn’t dead because of him, whatever the actual circumstances of his death. Burke’s crusade has claimed a life, and it was a life he never intended to have in his crosshairs.

This is the most human Burke Devlin has ever been. That’s not to say he won’t go back to being an abrasive asshole at the soonest opportunity, but here we see he does have an understanding of the destructive consequences of his actions. And he’s even capable of feeling remorse for them.

As I intimated way back in the beginning, during Burke’s very first scene with Bill Malloy, revenge is one of the most recurring themes on Dark Shadows, particularly the ultimate hollowness of the pursuit. Burke is coming to realize this for himself. That the great plan he dreamed up over the last ten years was bound to never match up to what he expected, that his pursuits would cause the destruction of old friendships, make him more enemies than allies and, ultimately, leave him with less than what he started with.

And, as Sam tells him grimly, you just can’t have it both ways. Maybe it’s easier to forget.

Back at Collinwood, Carolyn prepares to make her nightly mistake, despite Liz’s best efforts.

So, she seems to have cooled her proverbial tits somewhat. Also, I love that Carolyn got her hair all styled for a sexy night out while spitting mad and on the verge of an emotional break. Only on soaps. Even this one.

Elizabeth points out Carolyn mentioned she might just seek out Burke tonight, but Carolyn reassures her.

…does she know this? Does anybody? I mean, it’s nice that Carolyn seems to finally be internalizing it, but it’s not like she has the best track record when it comes to telling the truth, or even knowing what she’s going to do within the next ten minutes.

Carolyn reminds Liz that she’s still on the outs with Burke because, as of his grand pronouncement yesterday, he has declared war on the family, and she wants no part of him anymore. And while that’s very noble, and she hasn’t yet broken this word, you and I know Burke is in this episode, and Carolyn is Carolyn, so we should just buckle out seatbelts and brace ourselves.

Before Carolyn leaves, Liz reminds her of the still-missing Vicky, and how it’s very strange that she’s missing in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm. Carolyn insists she’s probably just gone out for a night on the town, as she does so often, of course.

It takes years of training to be this effortless of a bitch. It’s not like Carolyn has one of her inexplicable grudges against Vicky this particular day. It’s just that she couldn’t care less what happens to her, because this is Her Night. She even tells Liz that she only intends to worry about herself tonight, as if this is a novel thing she’s never done before, and not her resting state.

So Carolyn leaves, Liz frets, and somewhere, lightyears away, Victoria Winters wonders if she can eat the wallpaper.

There’s this bit where Vicky tries to pull on the bars over the window. But why are there bars on a second story (at least) window? Do all the windows in the closed-off wing have bars? It’s an odd security precaution, especially since they don’t seem to mind more than half the house being overrun by vermin.

Act III begins, and everybody is drunk.

The bartender shakes his head at that, like he’s contemptuous of Sam. Or you can imagine he doesn’t believe he’s a good man, because a real good man would be able to send his daughter off to college and see that his wife doesn’t have to spend her middle-age scrubbing the bidets of wealthy matrons, all while he fills the men of this town with poisonous swill. What life is this? Where could he have gone wrong?

See, he’s a very complex character.

So, the table is covered in drained glasses, and any reservations Sam had about drinking with Burke have evaporated. This is the first time they’ve been truly friendly with each other, which is natural because being drunk is funny on television. Sometimes it’s funny in real life, so long as you’re in good company and the atmosphere is right, and you aren’t sitting home alone watching the episode of Everybody Loves Raymond where he resumes piano lessons from his mother…

Anyway, now I get to transcribe the whole scene because it’s too good to gloss over. Burke, possibly facetiously, definitely drunkenly, offers to give Sam a “big fat tip” for covering the cost of his latest round.

Whenever Burke talks about how much he likes money (and he does talk about it, not that that justifies how stupid it is), there’s a little sense of self-awareness, as if the writer, whichever it may be, is aware it sounds silly. Drunk!Burke is able to acknowledge this in his own delightfully idiosyncratic way. It is stupid that Burke’s position as a big-time corporate raider has caused his revenge to be the world’s lamest real estate scam. It is stupid. We are right to laugh at it.

The fact that Burke is capable of finding all this funny only makes him more relatable.

Sam points out that the Collinses have more money than they know what to do with, and all it’s got them are…

This is all just so great. I’m worried my commentary is becoming insufficient because it’s hard to say all the reasons why this is great. It’s funny, it’s natural, it’s satisfying from a narrative standpoint seeing these two comfortable with each other and friendly for once. Every aspect of this episode is unique and also exemplary, highlighting the best of every facet Dark Shadows has to this point: soap opera, melodrama, gothic horror, romance, and a pure, sweet sort of poetry that transcends classification, but is readily apparent once you’ve seen it in action for yourself.

There’s also a naturalness to this drunken banter. It could easily seem jarring that Burke and Sam went from talking about the Crusades to lamenting a lost past to talking about money to talking about ghosts, but Mitch Ryan and Dave Ford make it work beautifully well. It really feels like a meandering conversation between two old friends at a dark, shadowy bar on a dark and stormy night.

Burke wonders if Sam has ever seen a ghost around Collinwood, and you might remember a story he told Vicky while he was choking on those donuts, about how when he was a boy, he snuck into Collinwood looking for ghosts and got…er…paddled (presumably by Paul Stoddard) in the process. Sam, of course, has rarely been to Collinwood, and only once since the show began, so he hasn’t.

Sam claims he can tell there are ghosts around Collinwood because he is an artist and has a “sensitivity”.

I mean, I’m sure he was trying to call Sam “artistic”, but alas.

After soliciting more booze, Burke notes that on a grim, stormy night like this, the ghosts of Collinwood are bound to be more active than usual.

Sam notes one ghost would be sufficient, and Burke seizes on that.

Though there is one person Burke wouldn’t like to be terrified by the hordes of the undead:

And he’s drunk and embarrassing, so you know he means it. He really doesn’t want any harm coming to her. He’s had a funny way of showing that the last few days, ever since she helped Roger with his alibi but, despite everything, he seems to truly care for her. Now all we need is for him to actively demonstrate this to her face.

Sam raises a toast to friendship, which allows Burke to muse on a missing friend.

Sam points out this breaks Burke’s promise not to mention Malloy.

God, this is so cute. How can this show be so good at subtextual homoerotica and so bad at intentional heterosexuality?

Sam remarks that he wishes his old friend Malloy were here and we are, perhaps, reminded of the drunken admission Sam made to Malloy that put into motion the events of these last 45 episodes. In many ways, a lot has changed, even if the road to get here has been long, meandering and often frustrating. Malloy’s death has provided change. Perhaps not the expedient kind Francis Swann was brought on to facilitate, but the canvas is different in some ways.

Joe might finally be done with Carolyn, a new romance may be forming between him and Maggie. Burke and Sam may reconcile their old friendship, which might make Sam less tractable to Roger’s influence. Somewhere, a million miles away, Victoria Winters’s life is in danger because of a lie told by Roger, who has manipulated his son more effectively than he’s ever hoped to control the adults he comes into conflict with.

And somewhere out in the ether, there are ghosts on Dark Shadows. Real, actual ghosts that seem to reserve their appearances for eerie, dark nights like this one.

For the first time since Malloy’s death, a point has been raised that, in a town said to be overrun by ghosts…why shouldn’t he be one of them?

Burke asks if Sam believes Malloy was murdered and Sam admits he does.

The two men raise a toast to their dead friend, and Sam begins to sing:

Dave Ford has some serious pipes. Some years after this, he would have a small role in the film adaptation of 1776, in the midst of America’s Bicentennial craze. He does get a few chances to show his chops on Dark Shadows, as if I needed any more reasons to love the hell out of this guy.

In any case, this is a great scene. The two men join in, singing the old sea shanty in rousting tones, any bad blood between them seeming to be forgotten for the sake of their mysteriously departed friend, who they imagine (fancifully or not) may yet return to the world of the living, if only to resolve the question of who killed him.

Carolyn enters in the midst of this, storm-swept and flustered, eager to make a mess for no other reason than to feel something. And, naturally, Burke wastes no time recruiting this nubile teenager to share a table with him and his equally drunk and (even) older friend.

And because Carolyn is Carolyn, she is flattered rather than terrified for her safety.

Wallace had her use the same expression when Joe showed up to Collinwood drunk to accuse her of holding out on marrying because…er…Liz’s spinisterishness was contagious or something. Either way, Carolyn seems to like her men marinated.

In any other situation, a teenage girl being escorted to a table with two older, very drunk men, would provide the framing for a particularly open-and-shut episode of Dateline. Here, as with everything else in this episode, it’s more delightful than it has any right to be.

This is Carolyn’s first scene with Sam Evans. They almost had a scene together during the Cursed!Sam days, where, off-screen, Sam told Carolyn and Joe about Roger’s car crash. Nevertheless, this is also the first time Nancy Barrett and Dave Ford ever share a scene.

And if you think it’s a little odd that Sam is kissing her hand on their first meeting, allow me to clear that up by offering an entirely sensible explanation:

David Ford and Nancy Barrett were having an affair on the set of Dark Shadows.

This isn’t conjecture or anything. Nancy Barrett was apparently smitten with the charming, fellow stage-trained actor who came aboard the show in the summer of ’66. They were married in 1967 and…er…well, they split in ’68, but the fact of the matter is, these two were in love for a while. Of course, I’m not one to judge a romance from half a century ago, especially when I’ve been perving over Dave Ford since he showed up.

I’m not sure if this is better or worse than whatever shenanigans Elizabeth imagined her reckless, spurned and horny daughter would be getting up to tonight.

Sure, a girl for each of ‘em. This is all very pleasant.

Of course, before the sparks can start flying between these two, a stray comment about dinner gets Sam to remembering his prior engagement.

I like how Sam seems genuinely afraid of Maggie’s wrath, like she’s the parent which, let’s face it, she is.

At which point Sam realizes he’s said too much and, embarrassed for Carolyn’s sake, takes off.

It’s still weird that Carolyn didn’t figure out it was Maggie Joe had the date with before, especially given half the reason for her inane tantrum last week was because Roger had told her about Joe and Maggie dancing. Ah well.

So now Carolyn and Burke are alone together, and somehow that isn’t the scariest thing about this episode, which shows how far we’ve come.

So much for Burke having nothing to do with her, or her having nothing to do with him.

Speak of the devil…

GIF: Malloy appears. “Wake up, Miss Winters! Wake up!”

HOLY CHRIST

It’s all been building up to this. All the heightened tension, dramatic outbursts, and philosophical musings of the episode culminate to this moment. Burke softly serenading Carolyn segues into the mournful, echoing tones of a familiar voice singing the same song. We dissolve back to Vicky’s prison in the east wing, where she has fallen asleep on the old cot and, like a shadow melting from the wall, the translucent form of Bill Malloy appears, draped in seaweed as if he’d just risen from the sea in which he was killed.

This is, of course, not the first time we’ve seen a ghost on Dark Shadows. The first explicitly supernatural event occurred in Episode 52, the night Vicky and Carolyn saw Malloy’s body in the sea at the foot of Widow’s Hill. In that instance, an unseen hand opened the Collins genealogy to Josette Collins’s entry.

Still, the first actual appearance of a ghost occurred 15 episodes ago, in Episode 70, at the newly introduced Old House. While the book opening was slipped under the radar to close out Act III on a Tuesday episode, the emergence of a Woman in White, certainly the ghost of Josette herself, emerging from her portrait to walk the grounds, was the shocking cliffhanger that closed off the week.

Dark Shadows’s march from the merely “gothic” to the overt supernatural has been long and painstaking. Dan Curtis has been gradually testing the waters, upping the ante bit by bit just to see how much he could get away with.

Now, for the first time in its 17 weeks on the air, the world of the dead touches that of the living on Dark Shadows.

The ghost of Bill Malloy calls Vicky’s name, jarring her from fitful sleep. She whirls around and gasps in surprise at the sight of the faintly glowing figure.

*we’re probably supposed to believe he doesn’t look just like the dead guy, sort of roll with it, this was all very new for them*

Perhaps restricted by some arcane ghost rule, Malloy cannot explicitly identify himself, nor describe how he died, or even who killed him. He still retains the manners to refer to her formally, as “Miss Winters” rather than Victoria or Vicky, but other than that: Ghost rules.

And the ghost rules mandate saying as little as possible, as cryptically as you can.

She must be getting sick of everybody she meets telling her this. Wait, what was that about being killed…

So, as with Josette, the primitive special effects used to “project” the translucent form of actor Frank Schofield (back for a limited engagement!) aren’t very good, and yet them not being good only increases the sense of unease and unreality.

So, alone, Vicky convinces herself that the ghostly form of the dead man warning her of an attempt on her life was just a dream which…okay, not totally weird, especially since David was telling her all about how he chills with ghosts in here all the time, so it isn’t insane that she’d dream up something like that.

Also, Victoria is the Skeptic and, since this is her first brush with the supernatural, she simply must react with some measure of disbelief.

There’s this bit where the candle gutters and Vicky runs to it and kind of panics before running to the door to try calling for help again. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, because the candle was supposed to go out, and the crew guy who’s job it was to do that…failed. You can even hear the little puff as he exhales, poor guy.

But we’re 20 minutes into the episode and not about to do an extra take for some nonsense like that, so Alexandra Moltke acts as if she has been plunged suddenly into all-consuming darkness, running to the door in a panic to scream for help…

But, of course, no answer comes. Victoria turns around and lets out a heart-rending scream at the sight of…

It was no dream. And, yet again, there is no turning back.

Behind the Scenes Shenanigans

This is the very last episode for Art Wallace, the man who wrote the original Dark Shadows series bible, and who was the sole writer for the show for its first 40 episodes, an unbroken run that will not be copied by any other writer for the rest of the series run.

As a final episode, it’s nearly perfect, one of the best he ever wrote for the series, and massively significant for its future.

In the following years, Wallace would go on to write for a variety of shows across the genre spectrum…fitting, given he never seemed to settle on an exact genre niche for Dark Shadows.

While Dark Shadows was still on the air, Wallace would write episodes for police dramas like Coronet Blue and Felony Squad, as well as two episodes for groundbreaking scifi drama Star Trek. Yes, a writer on Dark Shadows wrote for Star Trek.

Between 1970 and 1971, Wallace wrote four episodes for The Bill Cosby Show. No comment.

Wallace had a view gigs throughout the ‘70s, including on the Not Good Planet of the Apes TV series they made.

In the ‘80s, he returned to ABC Daytime, serving as a story consultant on All My Children. His wife, you see, did breakdown writing for the show during the same period.

Wallace passed away in 1994.

Francis Swann is, for now, the sole writer on the Dark Shadows team, and resumes his duties with Episode 86.

This Day in History- Friday, October 21, 1966

A school is buried under an avalanche in South Wales, which kills 144 people, 116 of whom children buried in their classrooms.

On a, er, lighter note, the U.S. Congress approves the merger of the AFL (American Football League) with the NFL (National Football League). The creation of the New Orleans Saints was apparently pivotal in getting certain antitrust reps on board. Good to know America’s core values have remained the same over the decades.