Last year, between the two of us, we watched an average of 317 movies.
This year our goal is to top that by watching at least one a day.
And as an extra special torture, we've decided to write about all of them.

13 May 2008

The Curse, dir. David Keith (1987)

NIKKI says:
I knew it was going to be bad, I had no idea it was going to be as horrendously awful as it was. Wow, it was bad on a new level. Not only was the acting bad, the script terrible, the direction imperceptible -- it simply didn't make much sense. Characters were introduced and then they disappeared, those that stuck around suffered from terrible stereotyping. and -- worst of all -- the movie opened with Bo Duke getting led of screaming in a cop car, sort of like Kevin McCarthy in invasion of the Body Snatchers -- yet the movie ends with Wil Wheaton watching his house get swallowed up by the curse, Bo Duke beside him. So, how did we get from this to Bo Duke with the cops?

Oh man.

The premise, likely thanks to H.P. Lovecraft, is actually quite interesting: A meteor lands on an old man's farm and starts turning the family members how live there insane. The old farmer is all super-religious and he refuses to get help for the family, choosing to solve the problems on his own. Obviously, he fails, and it's all about the pride of the farmer on dying land, and all that. But, the movie doesn't embrace these themes, and instead becomes just silly.

I am sure everyone involved thought they were doing something really brilliant. Oh, poor deluded souls. It's just sad and tragic, and I feel bad for them all.

1/5

STEVE says:
Oh, man - where are Mike and the 'bots when you need them?

I knew The Curse was bad going in, that's the thing. I watched it with my friend Vince back in 1987, and even then I knew it was shite. Now I didn't expect it to get any better with age, but I thought it might be more fun to watch, you know, in the post-MST3K era.

It wasn't.

I'm not sure whether to blame David Keith's direction or David Chaskin's script. The direction was just plain sad, but the script wasn't genius either. Chaskin plucked many elements from the story, but arranged them in such a way as to leave out the plot. However, since the original title of the script was The Well (a major plot point in Lovecraft's story), I'm not sure how much of the blame he deserves.

Perhaps it was just studio interference, or a combination of all of the above. Either way, The Curse is the hands-down worst of the Lovecraft films.

.5/5