677 — darkshadows

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Number	668
Timeline	1969
Narrator	Grayson Hall
Writer	Gordon Russell
Director	Lela Swift
Broadcast	January 28, 1969 (Tuesday)
Recorded	January 21, 1969 (Tuesday)
Video	Complete: Disc 71 Collection 12: Disc 3

We have 40 images of Dark Shadows 677

Beth's ghost leads Julia and Barnabas to the cottage, where they find Chris dying, having being poisoned by Quentin's ghost.

Synopsis

The dawn of a new day at Collinwood. Most of those who live in the great house are still asleep, but for Barnabas Collins, there can be no sleep until he learns what happened the night before in the family mausoleum at Eagle Hill Cemetery. There, a young man, afflicted by a curse that transforms him from man to beast, has spent the night locked in a secret room.

Barnabas releases Chris from the mausoleum where he spent the night without incident. David visits and distracts Chris while Quentin poisons his drink. Chris believes that the transformation will not occur this evening, however he starts to suffer pain from the poison. The ghost of Beth leads Julia and Barnabas to the Cottage where they find Chris dying.

Memorable quotes

David: I always get up this early.

David: Aunt Elizabeth is always talking about how important sleep is.

Barnabas: (about the anxiety and tension Chris feels) I understand that.

Chris: You're a good man, Mr. Collins.

Barnabas: There have been those who didn't think so.

Dramatis personae

Background information and notes

Production

Story

The edition of the Collinsport Star read by Chris at the cottage has a headline that says, "Girl Disappears". Is this referring to one of Chris's other victims? Or something else happening? It appears to be the exact same prop used in 238 to report Maggie's disappearance when she was kidnapped by Barnabas; the image of the girl looks to be that of Maggie.
The phases of Chris's transformation into the werewolf aren't always the same, varying from one- to four-night periods. It has never lasted longer.
David likes to get up early.
Chris and David talk about how Carolyn has offered Chris a job on the estate. (This is the first mention of such a job offer.)
Chris impersonates W.C. Fields when he jokes about carbonated grape soda from the vineyards of France.
Julia reads The Lycanthrope of Angiers, which puts forward two schools of thought about werewolves. One is that a man becomes a wolf, and another is that it is a mental disease, where a man only behaves like a wolf (Barnabas and Julia discount the second theory, having seen the creature Chris becomes). She also discovers that there are two ways to become a werewolf: to be bitten by one and survive, or from a curse. They believe the latter to be the case with Chris as, if he had been bitten by a werewolf, he would have remembered the incident and told them about it (and, indeed, a curse eventually proves to be the reason Chris is a werewolf).
Julia and Barnabas both believe that lycanthropy is "the study of werewolves." But this is incorrect. Lycanthropy is not a study of the disease. It's the disease itself.
GHOSTWATCH: Quentin's ghost poisons Chris. Later, Beth's ghost leads Julia and Barnabas to a dying Chris.
TIMELINE: Day 267 begins, and will end in 678. The dawn of a new day at the start of this episode. It was last night when Barnabas locked Chris in the secret room of the Collins mausoleum. 6:30pm: Barnabas and Chris wait for moon to rise.

Bloopers and continuity errors

As Barnabas and Chris stand outside the front door of the cottage discussing what to do about Chris's possible transformation that evening, either Frid or Briscoe seems to miss a line as there is a long, awkward pause before Chris tries to recover with a line that doesn't make a lot of sense: "It just all depends on what's gonna happen."
Don Briscoe muddles another line to Barnabas - "I’ve gone through it so many times, I really know all about it. I have all the phases of it quite under — control and knowledge.”
As Chris and David leave to get a soda, we hear them close a door. (You can also hear whispering offstage.) At the same instant, the cottage door moves slightly a few seconds before it mysteriously opens all by itself. [Other than perhaps taking too long for the door to open, this isn't really a blooper - the door opening is supposed to be when Quentin's ghost enters the room.]
Chris and David exit screen left to get a soda. When Matthew Morgan lived in the cottage, the kitchen area was at the opposite end. Perhaps Laura commissioned some renovations?
A boom microphone shadow makes a sudden appearance as Barnabas returns to Collinwood after leaving Chris alone.
When Beth leads Julia to the cottage after Chris is poisoned by Quentin, she uses her hand to turn the doorknob on the cottage door. Julia, watching her at the doors of Collinwood, is on Barnabas' left side. The reprise of this scene is different in the next episode.
Ghosts can appear and disappear, but do they have the power to make objects disappear and reappear such as the bottle of strychnine in this episode? It seems unlikely. [It happened. Hence, they have that power.]