Why was Barnabas so cruel to Julia? He didn't have to force her to help him kill Dr. Woodard. He didn't have to rub her nose in it so hard. I can think of two reasons. First possibility: he did it because her hated her for putting him in danger, so he was punishing her. Second possibility: he did it because he hated himself for killing Dr. Woodard, and he needed somebody to share the guilt with him, to make him feel it wasn't so bad. Or else maybe both reasons were mixed up in his very strange mind. However it may have been, it was wonderful to watch both Frid and Hall in their scenes together - and rather amusing when Woodard ganged up with Barnabas against Julia.
Good question, and good answers. I think Barnabas was furious against anyone who would expose him, especially Woodard, and sees it, or needs to see it rather, as a totally unnecessary self-aggrandizing, self-righteous act, on the part of someone who gets to live a comfortable life, respected, perhaps prosperous, with no curse, who gets a nice comfortable bed, gets to dream, gets to have an insufferably clean conscience, and gets to proclaim what's right and wrong from the top of Mt. Olympus.
Maybe I started thinking about things this way after reading this book on anti-semitism of Sartre's, where he talks about anti-semites feeling small and threatened and powerless against Jews, when the anti-semites back then actually had the power.
Barnabas probably gets conficted with Julia too; the more she agonizes over what Woodard has in his future, the angrier Barnabas gets. I'm going to put her in the same boat with me if it kills me--- is one thing rumbling under the surface of his thoughts, probably. I'm going to be destroyed for something not my fault, by comfortable people in comfortable circumstances, saints in paradise, when I just want to be left alone?! Well, no, these pseudo-saints are going to get knocked down to Earth, and have to wallow in moral mud like I'm forced to do. They're not better than me.
It's understandable. I can identify in a way, when healthy people in comfortable situations, who get to live real lives, get to be automatically contemptuous and dismissive toward my extreme but unusual and unfamiliar condition. I fight not to get twisted by bitterness every moment. And I wouldn't exactly blame someone for losing perspective, after being killed, becoming a vampire, and being trapped in a coffin for 175 years. And having to drink cow's blood.