You may well have heard of the horrifically tragic accidents behind the scenes of The Crow, where a gun mishap claimed the life of actor Brandon Lee, or Twilight Zone: The Movie, where a helicopter accident killed actor Vic Morrow and two children. It’d be fairly insensitive to suggest that these horrific tragedies were caused by demonic interference rather than sheer terrible luck, the kind of terrible luck that results from overstretched productions and underpaid crews. Yet this Shudder original series, which has already managed a second season, makes precisely that ghoulish suggestion about five films, all-more-or less in the horror genre. Sorry, there’s no episode about the curse of City Slickers here. Nor, across the ten episodes so far produced, has Leonard Nimoy’s Three Men and a Baby been examined, a film which is genuinely believed (by rubes) to be cursed.
Instead, along with The Crow and Twilight Zone, we also get episodes on Poltergeist, The Omen and The Exorcist, varying wildly in quality. The Poltergeist episode comes first and offers a rather pleasant, if unfocused, ramble through the fandom for the film and its sequels before it gets into the specifics of the “curse”: Heather O’Rourke, the adorable little girl in Poltergeists I through III, died of illness aged 12, which was possibly preventable, while Dominique Dunne of the first film was murdered her boyfriend at age 22. And why should the series be cursed, rather than these being two unrelated and tragic incidents? No-one is really sure, though it may have to do with the alleged use of real skeletons in the first film’s climax. It is briefly pointed out that numerous other films, such as House on Haunted Hill, have used real skeletons, but before we have much time to reflect on that, we’re hurtling into the Omen episode.
Unlike Poltergeist, only the first Omen film was apparently cursed. Perhaps the Antichrist was flattered by Sam Neill’s delightfully evil portrayal in Omen III: The Final Conflict. Either way, the supposed curse turns out to be pretty lame, and the episode is mostly devoted to explaining to us what exactly a curse is, how curses have been understood throughout history, and so on, before a “black magician” appears, all long hair and Goth attire, and attempts to place a curse on an unnamed film in production at the time of the episode’s making. Wonder how it turned out. The Exorcist episode covers similar ground; it’s hard to shake the feeling that people are being manipulated when we see a “possessed” fellow confess that he lives paycheque to paycheque, then happily hand over a wad of cash to a freelance exorcist who has just “exorcised” him. The episode benefits, however, from interviews with the possessed girl herself, Linda Blair. Once again, the sequels are barely acknowledged, which is a little peculiar if you think about it; the only source of malevolence during production of the original Exorcist wasn’t Satanic in origin, but simply the behind-the-scenes antics of director William Friedkin, happy to terrorise his actors in the name of verisimilitude. If there’s any real curse relating to Exorcist, surely it’s the continual failure for any sequel to recreate even a fraction of the success of the original-?
Three episodes in and no closer to any sort of conclusion as regards curses. No-one can even decide whether Satan was for or against films like Omen and Exorcist, which for all their mayhem ultimately espouse a conservative, Catholic worldview, but then there’s no such thing as bad press. Suddenly things take a different tack; we’re given an in-depth examination of the behind-the-scenes failures that led to Brandon Lee’s death on The Crow and the struggle of the cast and crew to pull through and finish the project. The curse talk is kept to a minimum; the most discussion of curses we get is a patient, yet firm dismissal from the great Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes, The Devil’s Rejects), whose scenes in the film as The Skull Cowboy ultimately had to be abandoned. It’s a commendable exploration of loss and grief as well as the failure to take proper measures to prevent such an accident. An armourer takes us through precisely the process that caused a gun firing blanks to discharge lethally. The next episode, dealing with Twilight Zone: The Movie and more specifically, John Landis’ “Back There” segment, is even better. Production designer Richard Sawyer, who appears visibly haunted on camera, speaks of building an entire Vietnamese village set, goes into his fears and frustrations after learning that explosives had been prepared without anyone consulting or even informing him, and goes into the appalling aftermath of that brazenness. Meanwhile, king of trash Lloyd Kaufman (of Troma Entertainment) appears in a dress and cheerfully reminds us that they’re just movies and for God’s sake, safety is more important. Either of these two final episodes would make for top-notch special features on home media releases of the respective films they focus on, and can be watched in isolation for those who are interested, but unwilling to sit through three episodes of hokey “curse” mumbo-jumbo. Interestingly, series creator Jay Cheel, in his commentaries for each episode, reveals himself to have a healthy dose of skepticism, not nearly as credulous as the series’ disingenuous “present both sides” approach suggests. Ultimately, Zelda Rubinstein of the Poltergeist trilogy puts it best, in an archival television appearance, visibly upset at the way her co-stars’ deaths have been sensationalised: “I think it’s a courtesy to put to an end this superstitious crap.”
★★★☆☆