Just when you think you’ve seen everything a genre has to offer, you find a movie at the tail end of a streaming service’s suggested viewing section that proves you wrong. That’s where films that truly live up to their cult status find their hiding spot. And they’re not “cult faves” that have already reached a level of exposure that makes them more mainstream or accessible, thus compromising their cult status (Halloween III: Season of the Witch and Lake Mungo come to mind when thinking about this). I’m talking about movies that don’t even come up when you search up Horror Hidden Gems lists online, like Scott Reynolds’ 1997 movie The Ugly or Tony Williams’ 1982 Next of Kin (search this one up and the first thing to pop up will be a Patrick Swayze movie of the same name followed by Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin).
Richard Ciupka and Peter R. Simpson’s 1993 slasher Curtains falls squarely in this category, a prime cult film. It was a troubled production that saw its first director leave the movie because he thought the story deserved to be told as a proper giallo-inspired slasher and not as a cliché-ridden commercial cash-grab. Actors were recast or fired, massive rewrites went underway when the commercial side of the conversation overtook the giallo one, and different endings competed against each other in a mad dash for release.
What’s fascinating about all this is that the movie actually focuses on filmmaking to a point, one of its most crucial aspects even: casting. It’s about the madness involved in method acting and the cruelty inherent in the casting process from a female perspective whenever an eccentric, egomaniacal director is at the helm of the project. It’s one of the smartest slashers ever made despite the many stylistic directions pulling every which way throughout, and it’s begging to be rediscovered, perhaps via restoration by the likes of physical media champions such as Arrow or Severin Films. Synapse Films released a 2K restoration of the film on Blu-ray and DVD back in 2014, but it was a bit short on special features.
Curtains centers on a group of actresses who are invited to the remote mansion of a movie director called Johnathan Stryker (John Vernon) for an unconventional casting session for the role of a woman that murders her unfaithful husband, called Audra. Stryker had already decided on an actress, a woman called Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar) who checked into a mental institution to research the role. The director, though, betrayed her and left her in the asylum while he looked for other candidates for the role. Cut to the casting phase some time later and we’re presented with a killer that wears an old hag mask with long hair that’s decided to narrow the actress pool one kill at a time.
Saying more would spoil the fun of figuring out who the killer is and what’s really driving those death count numbers up. What is apparent from very early on is that the giallo side of the creative conflict certainly won the storytelling battle, at least for the first half of the movie. Kills are bizarre, nightmare-like affairs that sometimes even involve a creepy doll that’s more symbolic of social expectations forced upon female actresses than anything else. Fans of Dario Argento’s Deep Red will be delighted by this. The doll’s inclusion here makes as much sense as in that movie, which means it doesn’t. But it never detracts enjoyment from it.
Curtains does have a particular kill sequence that has landed it some mainstream real estate. It involves the killer, masked up and dressed in black, ice skating towards an unsuspecting victim in broad daylight. The killer skates with a violent sense of grace that inspires terror given he or she reveals they’re carrying a small scythe as the distances closes in between them. It’s impressively shot and it makes great use of an icy outdoor setting to frame the killer as an immediate danger that doesn’t seem to be bothered by being out in full view (something other slashers shy away from).
While the commercial side of things does start to become apparent as the story develops, it never manages to take full control. Both directors, Ciupka (the giallo-inspired one) and Simpson (the one who took over), made the right decision in establishing a curious contrast between the killer and Stryker, the fictional movie’s director. Both characters inspire fear and dread whenever they’re on screen, mostly because they both signify death. One does so in the acting career front and the other in terms of plain old existence. The line is actually blurred between the two as the actresses’ futures largely depend on the cruel whims of a singular, powerful person. Actor John Vernon plays up Stryker’s malevolence spectacularly, carrying himself like a despot hiding in movie director clothing. This idea is seen all the way through to the end, and it does a fantastic job of giving the story a very structured and cohesive feel.
Curtains is a one-of-a-kind slasher that demands a bit more thought than the usual fare. It’s not about horny teenagers or long lost family members with Oedipus complexes using knives as an extension of their privates. In fact, Curtains isn’t much about sex at all. It really commits to exploring the power dynamics in the casting process to show just how unfair it all really is, accidentally mirroring the movie’s chaotic production (which was so bad that the Jonathan Stryker character is credited as the director in the official title sequence). It’s the stuff true cult movies are made of, and it’s about time the cult grows.
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