abstract
| - Roger plays a relatively secondary role in the film. He is depicted as an indifferent father, more concerned about his son's having cut holes in the family's Egyptian bedlinens as part of a ghost costume than he is about the troubled boy himself. At a "happening" (or ball) given by the family for the townspeople of Collinsport as part of an effort to reassert the family's role in the community, Roger is shown to be a womanizer, a liar and a thief, stealing from the guests' belongings in the coatroom while seducing the female attendant and - as part of his effort to seduce her - denying that he even knows who his son is. These actions are observed by Roger's recently arrived vampiric "cousin," Barnabas Collins , who is literally "hanging around" outside a window, prompting Barnabas to take action against what he regards as conduct dishonoring the family. Roger's most critical action comes relatively late in the film. Caught attempting to break into the mansion's vault in order to take the family fortune for himself, he is confronted with a choice by Barnabas of taking a lifetime income and leaving Collinwood forever or of adopting a more genuinely involved paternal role with his son, Roger coldly abandons David and the rest of the family, speeding away with little show of regret in a taxi. Roger's departing scene sets in motion a sequence of events which expose the upset David to mortal danger, prompting Barnabas to accidentally move into an area of bright sunlight while saving the boy. As a vampire, he thus begins to smoke and burst into flame, causing Barnabas' romantic interest, the live-in governess Victoria Winters, to temporarily reassess her affection for him.
|