Curtains

After a three-year production involving rewrites and reshoots, Curtains was finally released to theatres in 1983, where it was largely ignored.  While it’s far from perfect, it deserves better than to languish in slasher obscurity.

Famous director Jonathan Stryker (John Vernon) is preparing to direct “Audra,” a film about an actress who goes mad.  Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar) wants the part so badly that the two concoct a plan to have Samantha fake insanity to get committed to a mental institution so she can really get into character.  Being tormented by giggling madwomen who tickle her and steal her jigsaw puzzle pieces takes its toll on Samantha, and Stryker abandons her in the asylum and moves on with the production, inviting six women to spend a weekend at his mansion to audition for the part.  When Samantha discovers his plan (via a friend whose face is never revealed), she is furious, and, with the help of her unseen friend, she breaks out and makes her way to the mansion, where, as it turns out, only five young starlets have arrived; the sixth never made it to the casting call.

Curtains has a truly spooky, unsettling atmosphere thanks to its isolated setting and some effective imagery.  A creepy, sad-looking doll appears before some of the murders, while the killer herself is equally creepy and memorable under an old hag mask.  In the film’s most effective sequence, a woman is pursued through a snowy landscape by the killer in broad daylight.   

The final chase through a labyrinthine prop house is also well done and suspenseful.  However, the impact was lessened as I tried to figure out just who it was who was being chased.  Some of the women are given no background and barely any lines and as such are completely indistinguishable from one another.  The whole thing with Samantha’s faceless friend is bizarre; I thought maybe she would turn out to be one of the actresses or the killer, but she doesn’t appear again.  Additionally, one guy is introduced and soon forgotten, killed off-screen at some point.

There isn’t much blood or gore, aside from a decapitated head in the toilet, which one of the women discovers and reports to Stryker.  He comforts her with his penis.  This is after he’s auditioned several of the other actresses by having one seduce him with her eyes and another play the role of a man seducing a woman.  There isn’t any nudity, aside from a bare breast, but there are more than a few strange sexual situations.  Aside from the sleaziness that is Stryker, the sequence with the actress who doesn’t make it to the mansion reveals that she is rather kinky.  Her boyfriend pretends to be a rapist intruder, but this bores her, as does his offer to play a pizza delivery boy – “The pepperoni always gets stuck to my ass,” she complains.  Finally, he suggests one sex game that they haven’t tried – Pac-Man, but that is too much for her, and she draws the line.

The troubled production results in a flawed final product, but the unique setting, disturbing killer, murder mystery, and video game sex fantasies are enough to differentiate Curtains from the many other slashers out there.