Featuring: Richard Donner, Gary Sherman, Linda Blair
Director: Jay Cheel
141 minutes (15) 2020
Acorn / Shudder Blu-ray
Rating: 7/10
Review by Christopher Geary
This documentary show concerns five peculiar examples of American cinema with specific genre themes that, usually over the decades since, but sometimes during the sensational publicity upon first release, have acquired their own mythology. Often with meta-fictional aspects supporting their now legendary status, public beliefs or superstitions led to these allegedly ‘jinxed’ movies providing easy promo hype when odd coincidences are confused with causality.
The most obvious case is Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist (1982), plagued by macabre tales - seeming to mirror its own plot - about actual human skeletons being used on the movie’s sets for the ghastly finale’s scenes of unearthed coffins. The so-called ‘curse’ element did not appear fully until the original’s young star Heather O’Rourke died, age 12, just before sequel Poltergeist III (1988), directed by Gary Sherman, was released. Horror attractions include almost obsessive fascinations of location tourism, as the fictional Freeling family’s house in California became like an infamous Mecca for overly curious fans. Building upon the notoriety of spooky thrillers, props from various productions are now considered very collectable - especially if they are not rare, or reproductions, but genuinely unique items. An interview with F/X artist Craig Reardon explains how low-budget constraints for many genre movies resulted in skeletons being sought from medical supply-houses, because it was always cheaper than paying sculptors to make realistic bones from scratch.
Richard Donner’s The Omen (1976) tackled Anti-Christ prophecies like nothing before it, and managed to summon plenty of stranger-than-fiction verve from reportage that plane flights, carrying cast or crew, were hit by lightning. Other incidents where deaths, related to the production, were narrowly avoided fired up over-stimulated imaginations. Thinking around such accidents was coupled with dire warnings from Satanists about not tempting fate. These diabolical expectations sparked ‘pattern recognition’ behaviours from a public appreciation of The Omen, that was certainly glossy, and slicker than previous ‘evil child’ shockers, but still a confrontational milestone for Hollywood’s mainstream. Although this episode of Cursed Films has rather a lot more about other horrors in general, so it’s not just about The Omen, and a subsequent franchise of sequels, it’s nonetheless interesting to ask: does watching this TV series prompt viewers to see the original movies again?
Tragedy can be cynically exploited, or avoided, but sensationalist headlines nearly always provide ‘free’ publicity, so it’s really no surprise when studios choose to advertise horrors for maximum chilling affects. William Friedkin’s classic, The Exorcist (1973), had raised an even greater controversy. Its casting of Linda Blair as the innocent victim of demonic possession quickly spawned a wealth of urban legends from social anxieties and erosions of sceptical thinking. Does this movie assert credibility for supernatural beings, and their Catholic opponents? Obviously, a fine performance by Max von Sydow as a priest helped to realise many of the delirious but worrying events within the movie. However, there’s a blundering dilution of intelligent, investigative criticism here that foolishly undermines the unquestionable cultural impacts of the landmark movie by reducing ‘exorcism’ rituals to a dim lunacy of reality-TV styled ‘entertainment’.
Anthology production Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) was profoundly disturbed by its helicopter crash during filming of stunts for Vietnam War scenes in a time-travel segment directed by John Landis. The tragedy killed two children and actor Vic Morrow, but Landis managed to finish editing the story before lengthy court cases began. Despite changes to safety regulations, that have long since transformed the varied ways that helicopters are used in movies and TV, this episode of Cursed Films unwisely gives too much attention to Lloyd Kaufman (and his Troma movies), who has no connection to the accident, or any of the legal actions in its aftermath.
Morbid curiosity haunts The Crow (1994), now a part of that decade’s cycle of superhero films, because actor Brandon Lee died while making it and this movie was expected to establish his career as Hollywood’s top action star. For this gothic drama of death and resurrection, it’s particularly notable that Brandon’s father, martial arts legend Bruce Lee, also died on the brink of international stardom, while making a kung fu movie. Rob Cohen’s excellent biographical drama, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993), adds details to the Lee family’s mythology fuelled by tabloid hysteria, and hyped by conspiracy theories of Chinese-mafia plots. Michael Berryman speaks honestly about his casting as 'Skull Cowboy' for The Crow, and laments how mistakes were made on the set, but denies the possibility any curse. In the end, we might wonder if completion of stalled-by-tragedy movies following the loss of cast members is truly honourable or not.
A second season of Cursed Films looks at The Wizard Of Oz, Rosemary’s Baby, Stalker, The Serpent And The Rainbow, and Cannibal Holocaust.
