Curtains, l'ultime cauchemar

Though fans of today's slam-bang gorefests will likely be let down, CURTAINS is worth a look for low-budget horror buffs. Actress Samantha Sherwood is so anxious to land the film role of a troubled woman she has herself committed to get a firsthand look at insanity. Things turn grisly when the director abandons her to host a casting session at his home. One by one the beautiful women he's invited are picked off. Is Samantha our killer or are things more complicated than they seem?

Despite is limitations, budgetary and otherwise, the Canadian-made CURTAINS is able to hold the viewer's attention while delivering a few thrills. The acting is surprisingly solid by genre standards, though you won't find very many people demanding a recount for the 1983 Oscars. It's clear the people behind this effort cared and wanted to bring something unique to the cinematic world, so nonsensical moments (what's with the doll??) are more easily forgiven.

In some ways, CURTAINS is reminiscent of an early Friday THE 13TH entry. Those involved put their best foot forward, accepted their limitations and tried to please a target audience. And like Jason Voorhees' adventures, CURTAINS will require a suspension of belief and acceptance of the fact not all the questions are answered.

Curtains (1983) is a movie that I recently watched on Prime. The storyline follows a movie being made at a remote mansion where all the ladies want the lead role and will do anything to get it. Unfortunately for them, as the movie is being made people are disappearing and a serial killer is on the loose. Who could the killer be and why are the people at the mansion being targeted?

This movie is being directed by Richard Ciupka (Coyote) and stars John Vernon (Animal House), Samantha Eggar (The Brood), Linda Thorson (Half Past Dead), Anne Ditchburn (Slow Dancing in the Big City) and Lesleh Donaldson (Happy Birthday to Me).

This is a fun horror movie with a great premise, a solid cast and fantastic makeup, masks and costumes. The premise was believable and a perfect plot for a horror movie. The locations were well selected too. The cinematography was mediocre but the villain more than made up for it. The kill scenes were entertaining, my only complaint is that the kill scenes could have been better executed and contained more gore. There's an ice skating scene that I loved. The scythe scene was really good too.

Overall, this movie isn't perfect but it does have a worthwhile villain that's an absolute must see. I would score this a 7-7.5/10 and strongly recommend it.

Some creepy moments and an atmospheric location, but "Curtains" is also ponderous and bloodless, which, for a slasher coming at the end of a cycle, is suicide. It seems to have been inspired by Soavi's "Stagefright", an excellent slasher, but it's too slight, too low key to make any impact. The plot, if you can call it that, focuses on women auditioning for a part in a horror film. They don't get the part, they get killed.

The Australian "Nightmares" (by John Lamond) bears some resemblance to this, but uses its theatre setting to better effect.

The poster art depicting a deformed doll and a curtain was striking and raised expectations, but director Jonathan Stryker seems incapable of pacing the narrative and is finally undone by is refusal to let the blood run free.

As slasher movies go, this one is not too bad. It borrows liberally from other more famous Canadian slasher films (the wintry setting and actress Lynn Griffith from "Black Christmas", the killer's mask from "Terror Train"), but it's not a bad little film in its own right. It has a good set-up. Six young actresses are gathered together in an isolated house to compete for the same theatrical role (of an insane woman). As it turns out the treacherous director (John Vernon) had previously given the part to an older actress (Samantha Egger) who had gone so far as to fake her way into a mental institution to research the role and ended up being left there by the director. Soon the competitors start disappearing one-by-one. But is it the director, the bitter older actress, or has one the younger would-be thespians been driven over the edge by the competition? The movies falls apart a little in the middle (apparently there were directorial problems-- the director on record, "Johnathon Stryker", has the same name as the character in the movie, and, according to this website, they also had to replace a lead actress). The ending is good, however, and pretty surprising--and it definitely has some very spooky scenes.

This is one of the rare slasher movies that is more interested in creating a strong atmosphere and developing the characters than in showing 101 ways to carve up annoying, brain dead teenagers. If you're the proud owner of the "Sleepaway Camp" box set you might want to pass on this one, but if you like horror movies that are well-crafted and actually a little bit scary, this is worth a look

Contrary to popular belief, good horror movies are still being made nowadays, but we can't really deny that the 1970's and 80's were the greatest and absolute most profitable decades for the genre. The 70's resulted in numberless amounts of nasty & experimental exploitation movies whereas the 80's pleased us with a wide variation of grotesque and often downright demented slasher movies. Richard Ciupka's "Curtains" is one of the prime examples to state why the insanity of the 80's horror industry will probably never be equaled ever again. It's a thoroughly weird and unconventional low-budget shocker, and even though the plot is full of holes and completely implausible, the film literally bathes in an atmosphere of genuine creepiness and morbidity. The script is poorly written and very incoherent, nearly forcing the viewers to link bits & pieces of the story together themselves, but somehow the far-fetched events featuring in "Curtains" are fascinating and suspenseful to behold. Horror-regular and utter cool guy John Vernon ("Killer Klowns from Outer Space", "Sweet Movie") stars as an eccentric and slightly crazy director who's about to realize his ultimate dream, namely a theater-adaptation of the famous "Audra"; the tale of a remarkable female psychiatric patient. His regular lead actress Samantha Sherwood is so obsessed with getting the titular part she even has herself committed in an actual asylum to research the role. While Samantha is stuck in the asylum, Jonathan Stryker – bastard that he is – recruits six young and inexperienced actresses to audition for the role instead of Samantha. They're all invited to spend the weekend up at Stryker's remote mansion in the hills, but naturally a maniacal killer joins the party as well and immediately begins to wipe out the six contenders for the part. Did Samanta escape the asylum for revenge? Is it one of the women who can't deal with competition very well? Or perhaps Stryker finally went totally berserk? You don't require an IQ of 150 to figure out the killer's identity rather quickly, but Ciupka manages to maintain a respectable level of tension until the very last sequences and particularly the deaths of the girls are memorably gruesome. Most notably, there's one scene where the killer skate-stalks his/her screaming victim over a frozen pond, menacingly waving around a sickle! The isolated filming locations add a great deal of claustrophobic atmosphere to the movie and it also features a lot of effectively sinister scenery, like creepy old dolls, secondhand theater attributes and – of course – the killer's uncanny mask; which shows the face of an old witch with protruding eyes and a wide-open mouth. With a slight bit of imagination, you could even say that the mask used in "Curtains" predates the one in Wes Craven's "Scream" with more than a decade! Even though the dialogs are laughably inept, John Vernon still manages to deliver an engaging performance and he even compensates for the actresses' lack of talent. Also, keep an eye open for the brief supportive role of Michael Wincott, who later moved on to better Hollywood films like "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" and "The Three Musketeers". "Curtains" is once again a Canadian horror production, like so many other guilty pleasures of that decade. The list is nearly endless, with "Visiting Hours", "Prom Night", "Humongous", "Happy Birthday to Me", "Bells", "Funeral Home" and "The Pit". Essential viewing if you consider yourself a fans of cheesy 80's goodness, you can't afford to miss "Curtains".