More of My Favorite Moments from Dark Shadows

As I've pointed out earlier in blog posts past, MPI has been in the habit of cranking out "Best of " Dark Shadows related videos and DVDs since they took up the franchise back in the late 80s, and I've collected them like a fiend ever since.  I have incredibly vivid childhood memories of finding Scariest Moments from Dark Shadows and The Best of Barnabas in video bins in Kmart and the gone-but-not-forgotten Glasgow Woolworths and rushing them back home to tear off the plastic and shove 'em in the VCR, then trying desperately and with a grim kind of excitement to piece together the bits of story (the MPI video compilations were not well known for offering any context or, with the exception of Vampires and Ghosts, running the clips in any kind of order).  Last summer, disappointed with the Best of Angelique offering, I created my own personal Greatest Hits of Our Favorite Witch.  In the same spirit, here then is my idea for a few of the more obscure favorite moments from Dark Shadows:

#2.  Vicki meets Roger on the edge of Widow's Hill.  This is a far cry from the Roger of 1968, Cassandra's dupe, and later the man who holds an unsteady sword on Leviathan lackey Sky Rumson.  The Roger of Art Wallace's Shadows on the Wall is smug, smarmy, and yet somehow charming all at the same time (or, as Carolyn chirps, "He sends me, he really does!") and manages to exude an aura of danger.  Roger's emergence from the shadows continues to set the Gothic tone of the show, and allows for some on location footage, a rarity in later episodes.

#142.  David's mother and Roger's wife, Laura Collins, has returned and begins her campaign to take her son with her.  Laura is a test run monster for the series, a Phoenix -- or, as prototype Professor Stokes Dr. Peter Guthrie calls her, "the Undead" -- and a creature I have never encountered in literature again:  a woman who appears every so often, marries a man (usually a Collins), gives birth to his children, then does her best to burn them alive.  Here is the first "great big floating head" effect that Angelique would perfect later on in the series.

#214.  Vicki encounters a spooky Barnabas in the Old House soon after he takes up residence there.  They have a lovely conversation wherein Barnabas compares the house to a tomb.  Despite the fact that Barnabas was written, as was the case with Laura the Phoenix, to be destroyed after a few weeks, Jonathan Frid provides him with some subtle gravitas, particularly in lines like, "Forgive me.  Nothing that ever happened here was funny."  And his paean to the Old House is beautifully delivered.

#236.  Barnabas begins his plan to turn Maggie into Josette.  The creepiness of the plan combined with the desperation and intense need Frid evinces while basically monologuing in the direction of a monosyllabic Maggie makes this one of the most interesting episodes from the "Kidnapping of Maggie/Re-Josette-ifcation" arc.  And there's the music box with its pre-1795 flashback theme.

#289.  The fabulous Grayson Hall proves to be just the bit of adrenaline the show needed at this point; Barnabas remained unstaked, Maggie was sent off to the booby-hatch, and the story was beginning to stall.  Enter Dr. Julia Hoffman, blood specialist, psychiatrist, and a woman as unafraid to hand out sedatives willy nilly as she is to break into a vampire's cellar.  In this moment she discovers Barnabas in his coffin:  the look on Julia's face is one of elation more than fear, providing a very different female character than the show had hitherto offered us.

#397.  I'll admit:  the ghost of Jeremiah freaks me the hell out.  After this episode he abandons his vendetta against Angelique and we don't see him again for the rest of this storyline (though he will continue to materialize throughout 1968 and again in 1897).  The moment when Angelique throws open the doors, expecting Barnabas, shrieking like a harpy about his continued love for Josette, and finds instead the rotted corpse of Jeremiah always gives me the horrors.  Plus it's always fun to see Angelique hoist on her own petard.  Plus plus she marries Barnabas in this one, so it's landmark-y all around.

#658.  A farewell to one of the series' original characters as Joe Haskell descends into madness in the wake of witnessing cousin Chris' transformation into a werewolf.  This episode offers a dream sequence featuring Tom Jennings (Don Briscoe snarling and chewing the scenery with gleeful abandon) and the werewolf both as Julia sedates Joe to no avail ... and then ships him off to Windcliff, never to return.  Joel Crothers enjoys a few more episodes as Nathan Forbes, but this is the last of handsome Joe Haskell, my first Dark Shadows boyfriend.

#701.  The introduction of the 1897 storyline, including Magda (Grayson Hall in her most memorable role on the series), Sandor, Beth, and a Quentin who finally speaks!  David Selby instantly proves that he has the chops to join Jonathan Frid, Grayson Hall, and Lara Parker as one of the big honchos; his Quentin will remain an essential character until the very end, and this includes Night of Dark Shadows.  There's a lot of promise in this single episode, and those that follow fulfill that promise.

#978.  The height of the beautiful insanity that is the Leviathan storyline.  Whatever your feelings about it, there remain several engaging episodes such as this one, which brings back the magic of the Angelique vs. Nicholas feud and then, for extra measure, the Angelique vs. everyone else in a gorgeous scene where she squares off against Barnabas and Quentin, who manage to convince her to help Jeb Hawkes.  Angelique never looked lovelier in this, her final appearance in the present.

#1036.  The full ramifications of the possibilities inherent within the Parallel Time story reveal themselves when Dr. Julia Hoffman breaks the time barrier and offers Housekeeper Hoffman a devastating wallop upside the head that kills her double and allows Julia the opportunity to take her place.  This is the second time Julia has followed Barnabas across time to save his behind, and it won't be the last.  It's also crazy fun -- and more than a little disturbing -- to watch Grayson kill Grayson.