361 - (Nancy Barrett) - Storm clouds have gathered in the night sky over Collinwood, and a monumental storm is beginning, a storm so violent that all the elements of nature will rage against one another. For one woman this will be a night she will never forget.
There are only two characters in this episode, the voice of Dr. Woodard (Turgeon), and, at the beginning, a repeat of the previous episode's scene between Julia and Sarah. Otherwise, this is a tour de force of hysteria and voiceovers for Grayson Hall.
After realizing she's been deserted by Sarah, Julia finds herself locked in the Collins mausoleum (although she could have probably crawled underneath that gate, it looks like enough space). Julia grows more and more hysterical as she hears a woman sobbing, then a woman's horrible, cackling laughter. She calls out to Sarah, but no one responds. She lights a cigarette with shaking hands
and then is terrified to find blood pouring from behind Sarah's plaque on the wall. She fiercely tries to wipe the blood from her hand. She grabs the gate, sobbing, begging to be let out, and when she falls, crying wildly, on Sarah's coffin, the door opens by itself and she is free. The gate clangs shut after her departure.
Breathless, Julia closes the double doors of Collinwood behind her. She's dismayed to learn that the only one home is Carolyn, who gleefully informs Julia she's on her way out, too. Julia's relieved to see the blood is gone from her hand. Despite their poor relationship lately, Julia begs Carolyn to stick around,
but the young woman merely teases her about being afraid of being alone and heads out the door.
9:05 PM - Julia decides to calm her nerves with a game of solitaire in the drawing room, but first she hears a shutter banging in the wind, then feels an icy chill in the air and decides that whatever was in the mausoleum is there with her, now! She hugs herself and paces, resumes the game of solitaire, and tries to calm down. The window blows open and she closes it, then the double front doors. Only the wind, she soothes herself, wishing someone would come home. She warms her hands over the fire, which leaps up as if to burn her (wonder if Laura was in on this, too). Who's doing this? She frets. Sarah? Barnabas? Or, worse of all. . .is Dave haunting her? The piano begins to play "London Bridge" all by itself, and Julia slams the cover shut over the keys. She tells whatever it is to go away, she's not afraid, but then she spots a white-coated figure standing by the window and, terrified, screams and races upstairs to her room. She locks the door, gasping--she's safe! She doesn't hear anything but the storm. "Dave, was that you?" she asks. The lights flicker, then go out (it was awfully light in there for a dark room). She decides to leave the house and get help, but finds she is locked in her room. She bangs on the door, crying for help. She realizes no one is there but her and her intended destroyer. She tries the phone, which is dead, begging it to work. Prays that Roger is on his way home, please, please! She lights a candle and it is blown out; the curtains billow in the wind, yet the window is closed!
She sees the figure again--is it Dave? Begging to be left alone, she sinks to the floor, sobbing, clutching the legs of a small table. The phone rings and she instantly answers it--it's Dave's voice. "You're dead!" she cries hysterically. "And soon you will die," his voice coldly warns her. She hangs up, wailing, backs away from the phone, and hears a grinding sound growing louder and louder. Someone is turning the knob!
The door appears distorted in her eyes, the sound escalating. Julia tips her head back and screams, loudly and lustily.
NOTES: According to what I learned a few years ago, the budget for DS had gone over, so Dan Curtis decreed that they could only afford to pay 2 actors for this episode. That's why poor Grayson Hall got stuck in a virtual one-woman show. What did you all think of it?
I remember finding this episode VERY creepy the first couple of times I saw it. Julia, all alone in the house, beset by chills, blood spilling from a wall, inexplicable piano playing, the voice of a man she helped murder promising she will die, too, and over the phone! It's everyone's nightmare brought to life, and Grayson Hall did a masterful, if somewhat over the top job in this essentially solo episode.
362 - (Nancy Barrett) - The skies over Collinwood are lit by lightning, and the crash of thunder resounds through the great halls. But Collinwood is deserted, save for one terrified woman. She fears more than the storm, she fears a dead man who, perhaps, has returned from the grave to haunt her.
After hanging up on Dave Woodard, who terrifies her by promising she could die as early as tonight, Julia fearfully faces whoever is trying to get into her room. It's Barnabas, behaving very solicitously--he heard from Carolyn that Julia was alone in the house and wanted to make sure she was all right The lights downstairs are working fine, and he proves Julia's are also working by turning on her lamp. She tells him his plan to drive her crazy isn't working, that she refuses to be frightened. Aw, she saw Dave Woodard's ghost again, didn't she, he inquires.
She accuses him of causing what's happening to her, asks him to stop, and he responds, poor Julia, I wish I could help you--trust me, get some sleep. He leaves her room, smiling evilly, and she closes and locks her bedroom door after him.
Barnabas meets Carolyn outside Collinwood and gleefully reports that Julia is terrified and confused. You're being very cruel, Carolyn says, but Barnabas says she deserves such cruelty because she tried to keep him and Vicki apart. By the time he's finished with Julia, he gloats, she'll end up in a home for the incurably insane. First, however, he must get her notebook and destroy the last piece of evidence. Carolyn proudly reports to him that she gave Tony a piece of jewelry to put in his safe and now knows the combination. Now Barnabas can go retrieve the notebook! No, says Cousin B, Carolyn will get the notebook, using her womanly charms on Tony Peterson to get his keys and the notebook. (I don't understand why; is this a test? It would be so much easier for Barn to get it himself.) She asks what will happen if she gets caught, and he strongly advises her not to.
After dinner, Carolyn talks Tony into taking her to his messy apartment, where his ashtrays are filled with cigarette butts and there's no ice in the ice cube trays. He likes the fact that she keeps him guessing, but seems uncertain about her claim to prefer poor guys to rich ones. (Joe is a good example.) When he leaves to pour them some drinks and she steals the keys from his coat pocket and slips them into her pocketbook. When he returns, drinks in hand, she suddenly remembers a pressing personal errand she had to do for Roger and tells him she has to go--but will come back.
First he asks to come along, which she refuses, then he gives her an hour to finish her errand and come back to his apartment--otherwise, forget it. She gives him a quick kiss before leaving, and he stands in the doorway sipping his drink, staring after her.
Julia is relieved when Roger comes home. They discuss the perpetually stormy weather around Collinsport for a while, then he starts talking about how unhappy he is with Carolyn's latest boyfriend--that lawyer who is on his case about the cannery incident.
Julia is dismayed to hear that Carolyn's new friend is the man she entrusted with her precious notebook. She hustles Roger out of her room; she has to go to bed, she insists. Instead, as soon as Roger leaves, Julia calls Tony and tells him, even if he is expecting company,
she's coming to his apartment. He's annoyed at her barging in the way she does, but she tells him she knows he's expecting Carolyn. She goes on to explain that Carolyn is not interested in Tony, she's only using him--she wants Julia's notebook and will do anything to get it. Tony complains about spies and counterspies and wishes he knew what was in that notebook that was so important. Julia feels he shouldn't trust Carolyn and should stop seeing her, which angers the lawyer--his social life is none of her business! Besides, the notebook isn't in his office safe, he took it out and has it at his apartment with intentions of putting it in a safety deposit box the following day. Julia insists on seeing it, but when he goes in his coat pocket to retrieve his keys, they aren't there. Julia is very upset to hear this.
Carolyn uses the stolen key to break into Tony's office, then opens his safe with the combination she so cleverly memorized. The notebook isn't there! Tony must have put it someplace else, she realizes, but she doesn't have time to ponder where--the lights in the office flick on, and Tony is standing there, furious.
Carolyn is busted!
NOTES: Tony deserves better than Carolyn, but right now she's under Barnabas' influence and will use whoever she has to in order to accomplish her master's ends, and Tony is simply a tool.
I was so happy to see Carolyn caught. What is Tony going to do now?
Love, Robin
