m-p-driscoll

In recent years Tru TV has been churning out these phony Reality shows at a brisk clip. Probably entirely scripted, their casts aren't real actors and are only marginally real humans. The opening tag "Based on real-life events", is key to understanding this deception. It's a slippery way of saying "We made it all up". If you're willing to spend the $ to become a member of IMDb Pro, you'll discover that they helpfully break down viewership demographically. Guess who likes "Operation Repo", "Hardcore Pawn" and all the others....Young Males....period. I was one of those a long time ago and remember being loud and self-importantly clueless. If you assume everyone likes to watch shows full of people and situations they can identify with you begin to understand. This is about capturing the attention of the advertisers dream audience. Undiscriminating immature dudes. It's deeply cynical of Tru TV execs to pretend these shows are anything but bogus and shows a genuine contempt for their target audience. Ugly, full of improbable events and noisy cranks it's not even good fiction. Radioactively bad.

Seeing multiple pages of commentary on IMDb is an excellent way to judge the "watchability" of any film. Some love the work, some hate it, some are indifferent, but ALL feel compelled to give up a little bit of their lives to talk about it. Here's my 5 minutes worth. Cathy's Curse is a godawful thing. A stupid plot, community theater acting, really inept production work...and yet, for all that, there's something strangely addictive about this movie. If you don't believe, just Google and you'll see. For a crappy late-70's throwaway there's a lot of stuff out there. Ask the movie poster sellers (reproduction and authentic), the purveyors of film media and the endless horror sites and blogs, Cathy's Curse is a genuine cash stream. I myself own far too many horror and giallo films and even the worst of them is better than Cathy's Curse, but for odd chemical reasons this movie truly rocks. From Beverly Murray's spooky eyes and (you would assume disqualifying) speech impediment to Roy Witham as the wonderfully drunken caretaker & semi-lecherous babysitter, I just can't get enough. There are odd character's and sub-plots that appear and disappear at random. A dog who's got it all figured out in the first couple of minutes and a white statuette that Daddy likes a little too much, but somehow never notices when it goes missing. Great stuff! The music is pretty cool too, very odd funky. I actually own 6 copies, (2 on DVD & 4 on VHS) and still haven't seen a complete version of the film because they're all different! It's a public domain hell. As of this writing all the commercially available DVD versions are cut and missing important scenes ranging from long minutes to a few seconds. Why was this done? Probably nobody knows. The missing scenes are completely inoffensive and integral to the plot. Just more mystery. Some, but not all of the VHS versions are also cut. The DVD's all seem to use the same horrible (and I mean HORRIBLE!) print. VHS copies, even those in EP are much-much better. I have a mid-80's SP copy which is a revelation and luminous but is also the cut version. I have an EP copy which is almost complete but is missing one scene of about 15 seconds that's on the cut versions! It's even more complicated but you get the idea. If you're thinking about watching the film avoid the DVD's like death itself. They're an embarrassment and the people selling them should be ashamed. It's just plain old VHS for the best (such as it is) experience. I know plenty of you really hate this movie and importantly declare it "worst ever", and maybe it is. But hey! Here-you-are reading and writing about it. The thing is in your head, under your skin and all over the net. Clearly you can't ignore it or you wouldn't be here...Me, I dig the film for a lot of reasons, but mostly because Cathy really DOES curse & that's truly the BEST part of all.

Very pleasantly surprised at how good this film was. Great acting, super musical score, wonderfully tacky sets, even the continuity was on the mark. A lot of nice little touches too, like "Cream of Veet" instead of "Cream of Wheat" on the castle kitchen counter. It's hard to find a kid's film that the entire family will enjoy, but this is it! My favorite part was the seedy/needy vendors of all things Frankenstein and their mumbled entreaties to anyone and everyone. Watched this to catch a fleeting glimpse of the lovely Vanessa Koman in one of her few film roles (a big fan) but came away loving it all. Laugh-out-loud funny!