Director: Dan Curtis
Writers: , Sam Hall
Stars: David Selby, Grayson Hall, Kate Jackson
Run Time: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes
Link:
Synopsis
Quentin and Tracy return to Collinwood after many years away. They pass the boarded-up old house on the way in, but they plan on staying at the main place. The are greeted by Carlotta Drake, the housekeeper, who looks a lot like Dr. Hoffman, but isn’t– this is a different role for the same actress. She tells us that Mrs. Stoddard has died, and these two are the new owners of the house.
He’s a painter, and he admires the painting of Angelique Collins, who dies in 1810. Quentin is immediately drawn to the painting. He then sees a vision of a dead woman hanging from the tree outside. That night, he dreams of witches being executed. The next day, he goes out riding and has visions of Angelique’s funeral in the rain. Quentin visits with Alex Collins and Claire Jenkins, two more actors recycled in different roles.
Later, he sees himself as Charles Collins, a man who was having an affair with the already-married-to-his-brother Angelique. There there are lots of blurry shots of people walking around the house in an extended, but unnecessary, dream state. The brother catches Charles and Angelique together, and they fight. He wakes up to find that in real life, he has just beaten up Gerard the stable boy and strangled Tracy. They’ll both recover, and they don’t seem to mind for some reason.
Alex Collins sees someone in white wandering around the old abandoned greenhouse, but when he goes inside, no one is there.
Quentin confronts Mrs. Drake about things he’s seen, and she explains that he has seen Sarah Castle, a little girl who later reincarnated into Mrs. Drake in the present time. He has the ability to see the past, and he’s seen the events around Angelique’s death. Sarah was in the room when the townspeople conspired to kill the witch Angelique. Angelique’s husband is in on it. They all take Angelique out to the tree and hang her.
Tracy finally goes into Quentin’s studio and finds a painting of Quentin holding Tracy’s dead body in front of Angelique as if in some kind of offering. Quentin apologizes and then attacks Tracy; he seems to be switching personalities between Quentin and Charles.
Angelique’s ghost nearly kills Alex one night, and Claire sees the ghost. Charles, possessing Quentin, tries to kill Tracy once again, and she is only saved when Claire and Alex find her by accident. Then there’s a car chase in the dark and a knife battle between Quentin/Charles and Gerard until Tracy kills Gerard.
Quentin and Tracy decide they have to hunt down Carlotta, as this is all her fault. Tracy confronts Angelique while Carlotta jumps off the roof to her death. Quentin and Tracy decide to sell the estate. Quentin goes back inside the house and he and Angelique kill Tracy. We are told in a news report that Claire and Alex were killed offscreen in a car crash, completely out of the blue.
Commentary
Jonathan Frid was set to return as Barnabas Collins, but decided to turn down the role for fear of being typecast as a vampire. That may have been the worst career move in show business. In the end, they rewrote the story to feature Quentin Collins and his different, non-vampiric problems.
There’s really no relationship between this film and the vampire storyline. They used many of the same actors in completely new roles, supposedly this is an “alternate timeline” where everything is the same but different. Why they thought people would pay to see that is beyond me. There has to be a good behind-the-scenes story behind how and why this film was made.
Supposedly, the director was told to cut out 35 minutes of this film to get it down to where it is. That’s really saying something because what’s left really drags and feels like it was padded with a ton of filler. I didn’t mention many scenes of long looks and angsty posing, but there’s a lot of that. A lot of the story makes absolutely no sense, and you have to wonder what got cut that left this tediously long mess behind? I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone but a hardcode Dark Shadows completionist.