September 28, 2018
Written by: Robert Guza Jr.
Starring: John Vernon, Samantha Eggar, Linda Thorson
Budget: $3,700,000 (Canadian)
Quote: "You haven't spent five minutes with me and now you're telling me I'm wrong for the part. Why? Because I haven't got a staple to my navel like that centerfold? Because I wouldn't pirouette into bed with you and skate on your face? I mean, what the hell are you looking for anyway and what do you want from me? I mean, who the fuck is Audra anyway?"
Trivia: The climax as originally filmed had Patti performing her stand-up comedy routine on a stage with the bodies of her victims. This scene was eventually changed in a reshoot to Patti pretending to perform her routine in the asylum in front of the inmates instead.
Curtains is yet another movie to capitalize on the slasher craze of the 1980s except this time the filmmakers hoped to target an adult crowd instead of the teenagers that the Friday the 13ths were attracting. In creating the film, director Richard Ciupka hoped to create a more cerebral arthouse thriller and constantly battled with the producer, Peter Simpson, who wanted a more classic slasher film (much easier to market). They battled back and forth before Ciupka up and quit in the middle of filming, leaving Simpson to finish directing the second half of the film himself. This struggle for creative control resulted in a disjointed and very bizarre film. The movie meanders, scenes do not connect to one another, and the ending is unpredictable because it is so lame (I kept guessing at who the killer was and what their motive was... I was really disappointed when I finally found out). There are numerous parts of the film that are great but as a whole it does not work. Ciupka would ask that his name be taken off the credits and replaced with the name of the main character from the movie.
The movie revolves around a theatrical director named Jonathan Stryker (John Vernon who played the Dean in National Lampoon's Animal House), his veteran actress Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar) and five or so other actresses. In the beginning of the film, Samantha and Stryker have Samantha committed into an insane asylum to in order to research and craft the role of Audra she will be playing. Stryker decides to leave her to rot in the asylum but she breaks out with revenge on her mind. Meanwhile, Stryker has five or six aspiring actresses up at his house for a weekend long tryout session for the role of Audra. True to dirtbag director form, he bangs some of them and verbally/emotionally abuses others. Samantha ends up showing up at Stryker's house just as the girls begin to be murdered by a person in an old woman mask. Eventually even Stryker is killed and we are left with Samantha and Patti, one of the aspiring actresses who is also the comedic relief (kind of like a 1980s female version of Groucho Marx). Samantha reveals that she killed Stryker and one of the other actresses out of revenge (I'm not sure why the other girl was killed) and then Patti reveals that she killed all the others in order to get the role of Audra and stabs Samantha to death. The film ends with her doing her comedy routine to an audience of patients in an insane asylum.
While the film is kind of all over the place and the ending is pretty lame, the more artsy elements that Ciupka shoved into the film, really do make the movie memorable and interesting. Earlier in the film, one of the actresses has a nightmare about seeing a really creepy doll in the middle of the road that moved before she was hit by a car. She wakes up only to be killed and the doll stolen. This more surreal part of the movie helps to set it apart from the thousands of other slasher films. The doll will reemerge later in the film when a character finds its hand sticking out of ice. After retrieving the creepy doll, an ice skate chase ensues ending in the film's most memorable scene, the beheading of the skating actress.
Overall, the film is just so-so. There is very little character development for the actresses and there are so many of them that they all blend together and it becomes really hard to care when anything happens to them. Also, ironically for a plot aimed at adults, it is pretty silly and has a ton of plot holes. I think the director thought that the casting of adult roles, more serious actors, and acting auditions would make the film more marketable for adults, but instead it just made for a stale and bland film.
Oh well, the film has apparently gathered something of a cult following over the years, so what do I know. John Vernon and Samantha Eggar do great acting jobs and there are a couple of cool death scenes but aside from that, it doesn't have much going for it.
...if you disagree and want to tell me how stupid I am, feel free to leave a comment.
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