CathysCurse

Cathy’s Curse (1977)

The movie opens in the past (you can tell from the cars and clothes). A wife has run away with her young son. This annoys the father quite a bit, so he grabs his daughter and they take off in a car after them. The car crashes and both father and daughter are killed. Years later the young son, now older and with his own family, moves into his families old home. He has a young daughter named Cathy, who is almost immediately taken over by the “evil” spirit of his angry dead sister. Of course she is sneaky and only the girl’s mother realizes something is terribly wrong. But using one of the most annoying and popular low budget horror tricks of the 70s no one believes her. It seems that Cathy’s mother has recently had a “breakdown”. Eventually the husband gets wise to what is happening, banishes the evil spirit of his sister and saves his family. But the handyman is screwed. Why do they always kill the handyman? It just doesn’t seem fair.

In many of my reviews I’ve complained about the lazy narrative use of voiceovers to fill in the gaps of a story. As soon as I hear the voiceover I know I’m in for a poor movie watching experience. Well Cathy’s Curse blows right past the voiceover and takes things to an entirely different level of suck. The story is laid out in the opening on what appears to be hand written cue cards! I’m not kidding here guys. I hoped in vain that the story would improve from there, but it doesn’t. Basically Cathy’s Curse plays out as nothing more than a series of set pieces that try and invoke every “scary” ghost movie situation you can think of. Haunted Doll? Check. Creepy painting? Check. Evil Exorcist voice? Check. People getting locked in the scary attic? Check. Get the picture yet? Now some of the scenes are sort of creepy mostly because the young lady playing Cathy does a fine job. But the movie has an entirely disjointed feel and suffers from long boring stretches where nothing happens. I also really didn’t like the ending, which seemed rushed and contrived.

This movie seems to have had a decent budget. The locations are nice, the picture and sound are better than average, and there are a couple of recognizable actors in the cast with real honest to god parts. But the movie doesn’t manage to build any atmosphere. The sets are too well light and the camera work too pedestrian to build any tension. This is a ghost story without any jump scares for crying out loud! As I stated above the only really creepiness comes from the job that the young actress playing the lead. Getting a kid that can act is one of the toughest things. How could the filmmakers manage to screw up what should be the easier part?

To me this is one of those movies that had everything going for it, but was undone by a terrible script and bad direction. There are some on the Web that are way bigger fans of this movie than I am. I say more power to you, but I just don’t get it. I can’t recommend Cathy’s Curse. If you must see it you can grab yourself a copy on one of the Mill Creek DVD packs. Go to http://www.millcreekent.com/ for more information.

1 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer