October 28th

Curtains (1983) directed by Richard Ciupka

Well, I broke my own rule about not blind-buying movies and I paid the price. This was the extra blu-ray I got talked into buying at the Synapse table at the Flint Horror Con. In my defense, the labia-like curtains on the cover / poster intrigued me. Nope, that's not the first time this has happened...

Curtains is a failure of a horror movie. It thinks it's a slasher movie, but it doesn't pass my good slasher movie test:

1. Create a visually interesting villain.
2. Make that villain's kills either gory or creative (or both).

For #1, the film just qualifies. The villain wears a fairly creepy old woman mask, the top of which you can see on the poster. The villain with this mask on, ice skating in slow motion, was probably the film's best image. For #2, it utterly drops the ball. Editing ensures that we don't see most of the villain's kills. The ones that we do see are completely boring: a knife stab, someone shot with a gun... wake me up when it's over.

Worse, the movie's story is a mess. Supposedly, Curtains had a tortured production that lasted years, and you can certainly tell. The real killer has a lame motivation for her murder spree. The director's audition process doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Matthew disappears on a snowmobile with no explanation. The doll on the poster is used as an effectively creepy totem by the killer, then is completely forgotten later in the movie. The film tries to say something about how actresses can go too far to gain a part, but it ends up just saying "bitches be crazy, yo."

Ugh. To eBay, my new blu-ray goes.