DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk Archive => Current Talk '26 I => Current Talk '13 I => Topic started by: Watching Project on April 06, 2013, 01:08:10 AM
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Robservations #430
And if you'd care to look back, the first WP discussion topic for this ep:Re: Discuss - Ep #0430
(Coincidentally, this ep falls on the WP schedule exactly 11 years to the day it was last shown on the Sci-Fi Channel.)
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Barnabas watches the grieving Natalie and Abigail at Josettes grave. Ben is placing the headstone already. Barnabas hatches his plan to recall Josette to life in her room at the Old House and her picture has been restored above the mantel. Josette walks and when Barnabas forces her hand, she lifts the veil and reveals a large protruding eye. This repulses Barnabas and reveals he is only interested in the external beauty. Josette returns to the grave.
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This ep. is almost as sad as the one where Josette dies. Barnabas simply refuses to listen to reason (in the person of Ben) and pays the price.
At Josette's grave, Barnabas implores Josette to return to him. After he leaves, the freshly turned earth on her grave starts to tremble. In the drawing room at the Old House, the mantel clock ticks the seconds away. We see that Josette’s portrait still hangs in its familiar spot above the mantel, where Barnabas had it hung the day he was cursed. There it will remain until he returns in 1967.
I love the suspenseful atmosphere of this episode and the way we see only a little bit at a time as Josette rises from the dead. First we see the hem of Josette's white gown and her small white shoes as she walks through the woods, then her pale little hand as she turns the doorknob at the Old House.
Upstairs in Josette's room, the clock stops, and Barnabas suddenly senses the utter silence throughout the house.
We can see the hem of Josette’s fine lace veil as she slowly ascends the stairs.
Even after she stands before Barnabas, Josette pleads with him not to make her lift her veil. His revulsion and grief overwhelm him as he realizes she was right. Beyond hope, Josette is lost to him forever.
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The only thing I liked about this episode was Thayer David's lines and his delivery of them.
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Really, dom?
As Barnabas leaves the crypt and the camera pans back from him, we get a brief glimpse of Abigail standing there, or rather Clarice waiting to do her next scene. It's just as the fade-out to the title sequence is happening.
Everything about this (ressurrection of Josette)was very well done, right up until the monster makeup, which let the whole well-crafted sceario down. I don't remember this as a child, and don't quite remember how I reacted when I saw it after having rescued most of DS on VHS from a thrift store, in 2002. I think I must have reacted with a lot of anticipation. Very sad to see Barnabas pleading with a grave, and to hear poor Josette weeping and begging to be left to rest. (Whatever the "rest" of the dead really means, which is strange to think about.) Good acting from both. I like the clock stopping.
I don't think we can really accuse Barnabas of rejecting Josette on superficial grounds, because of unattractiveness. His seeing her that way really drove home that she really is dead, I think, though she's up and walking. She doesn't belong in the living world.
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Really, dom?
Well, there was one other moment of brilliance. Someone thought to drop a leaf from the sky during Ben & Natalie's grave site scene, I thought it was a marvelous moment of realism.
I wrote a review but deleted it. I would have probably gone with it had I been the first one here. It was so negative and nitpicky, pretty much the complete opposite of everything you said. Though I did agree with your assessment of the makeup, lol.