The Curse (1987)

Powerful

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

A lot of fun.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Don't even try to compare this movie to the Lovecraft story which it appears to be inspired by.The Curse is obviously low-budget: special effects are pretty crappy (although some are better than others), music sucks, and most of the scenes appear to not have had more than one "take". But still a brave effort! Acting is not bad. And scattered throughout are little sly and subtle bits of ad-lib-type humour which caught me by surprise, making me laugh out loud more than once. Rated 6 out of 10 for an entertaining watch without high expectations.

The Curse (1987) ** 1/2 (out of 4) A meteorite crashes into a Tennessee farmer's land but everyone believes there's no issue. Except for the son Zach (Wil Wheaton) who believes that the slime coming out of the thing is going to cause an issue. Sure enough, before long the farm animals are acting funny, the fruit is sour and soon his family begin changing into mutants.THE CURSE is an extremely bizarre little movie on many levels. For starters, some of Lucio Fulci's crew members worked on the picture and you can tell that the slime, gore and creatures are 100% Italian. They just have an Italian movie feel to them and anyone who are fans of those types of movies will pick up on it. The film is somewhat of a throwback to the sci-fi films of the 1950s when kids would witness something yet no adults will believe them. It also throws in the radioactive movies from the 1970s like THE FOOD OF THE GODS.So is THE CURSE a good movie? It almost is. I must say that I was shocked by how much I liked it but there is one major issue with the film and that's the fact that so many of the characters are so damn stupid. I mean, I understand people overlooking a few of the minor incidents that happen yet when people start turning into murderous mutants, I think it's time you get on the band wagon and feel some concern. The main farmer is a strict religious guy and this made for some good scenes with his stepson but for the most part I couldn't help but grow frustrated and want to scream at the film, which I'm sure many people did back when it was in theaters.I thought David Keith (AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN) did a nice job in his first directing job and I thought he handled the characters quite well. This is especially true early on when he introduces us to everyone. Once the gore happens he handles that nicely as well and there's a nice flow to the picture. I enjoyed all of the main performances in the film and especially Wheaton, Claude Akins, Malcolm Danare and Kathleen Jordon Gregory as the mother.THE CURSE has a lot of oozing creatures and other forms of Italian trash and I thought it all looked quite well. Look, this isn't a masterpiece or even a good film. It's not a smart one either. It's basically a low-budget horror film that actually remains entertaining even with its flaws.

Poor old Zack (Will Wheaton): his mom, Frances (Kathleen Jordon Gregory), has gone and married Nathan, a super-strict, religious zealot farmer (Claude Akins) who punishes every infraction with a lightning-fast slap or two around the chops (seriously, this guy has the reflexes of Bruce Lee). Zack's older step-brother Cyrus (Malcolm Danare) isn't much better, an obnoxious fat slob who takes every opportunity to drop the youngster in the s**t (sometimes literally!). Matters only get worse for Zack after a strange meteor crashes onto the farm, contaminating the water supply with space goop that spoils the crops, causes the animals to turn hostile, and turns his family into violent raving loonies with very bad skin.Loosely based on H. P. Lovecraft's short story The Colour Out of Space, The Curse is a trashy slice of '80s B-movie schlock that no-self respecting fan of bad movies should miss. The dreadful directorial debut of actor David Keith, whose career behind the camera has, rather unsurprisingly, not exactly flourished, the film delivers one unintentionally hilarious scene after another. Viewers are treated to a crazed chicken attack on Zack's l'il sis Alice (Amy Wheaton), a manky mutated tomato squirting a torrent of juice over Frances's face, a mouldy cow erupting in a spray of maggots, Zack's mother melting into a pool of liquid, and a ridiculously over-the-top finalé in which Zack must rescue his younger sister from the farmhouse, which is inexplicably collapsing in on itself, while fending off attacks from his demented step-relatives (Cyrus attacks Alice, while Nathan, impaled on a pitchfork, still manages to show Zack the back of his hand a couple more times before carking it).The amazing thing is, as bad as this is, it somehow spawned a sequel (of sorts)—Curse II: The Bite, in which a guy's hand turns into a snake.6.5 out of 10 (it's too much fun to rate any lower), rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

This movie had a somewhat good premise, just needed more. Then again is it not the story of almost every horror movie. They have something that could be good and screw it up with perhaps not enough killing, a story that goes off track or something that just causes the movie to derail. This movie needed more bodies to be killed of course I am a gore fan and while this movie has that it needed more killing. The story has a farm wife that is unfaithful and a very strict farm dad and two kids in tow. Well a meteor or something strikes and gets into the farm's water supply and what it does when consumed is not pleasant. Basically, the entire movie though is watching the farmer deteriorate both in body and mind. The son trying to keep his sister from eating or drinking the tainted food and water and his need to escape the farm. Like I said, add a bit more here and there and you have a winner as what happens to the family is rather disturbing. You feel for the boy and wish for him to escape, but you also wish the father would go on a major kill spree too.