cinema history class: curtains (1983)

The session: The Cold Can Kill Ya!
With plummeting temperatures, Keith shows us four movies with achingly cold settings

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 2: Curtains (1983)
Directed by Richard Ciupa and Peter R. Simpson

My Level of Prior Knowledge:
Never heard of it.

Plot:
Thursday night at Cinema History Class brought us Curtains — but with a twist before the first frame even flickered. Keith, our usual ringmaster of celluloid mayhem, ceded the podium to his friend Chris Gullo, who does some acting but is also known as a film historian and author (with books on Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasance and others to his credit). More to the point, he recently wrote about Curtains for Dark Side magazine and was clearly champing at the bit to share his research. He did so with enthusiasm, context, and just enough behind-the-scenes intrigue to make the film’s rough edges feel like part of the legend. He even raffled off a vintage lobby poster. Bobbo won it. I’ll admit to a flicker of envy, but then I realized Bobbo will treasure it in a way I probably wouldn’t. The universe distributes ephemera wisely.

As for the film itself: it’s very good. Genuinely tense. The jump scares are plentiful enough to keep your shoulders up around your ears, but not so relentless that you never get to exhale. There’s a rhythm to the dread. And the imagery — especially that now-iconic skating scene with the doll-faced killer — is striking, eerie, and memorable. Even when the narrative wobbles, the visuals carry authority.

That said, the script doesn’t give us much to hang onto in terms of character. The actresses assembled for the audition blur together; their rivalries are sketched rather than etched. A stronger investment in who these women are might have elevated the body count into something more tragic than procedural. One performer who does stand out, as he almost always does, is John Vernon. Vernon brings that oily gravitas of his — cultured, manipulative, faintly amused — and you can’t take your eyes off him. Even when the movie falters, he doesn’t.

And falter it does, especially at the end. The finale is ambiguous in a way that left me more confused than intrigued. Not so much “Let’s ponder the implications” as “Wait, what exactly just happened?” As Chris explained in his talk, much of this unevenness stems from behind-the-scenes conflict between director Richard Ciupka and producer Peter R. Simpson. Simpson reportedly took a heavy editorial hand, reshaping scenes and even adding the ending — shot much later — that Ciupka didn’t want. In fact, Ciupka was so unhappy that he declined to have his name on the finished product; the film is credited to “Jonathan Stryker,” which amusingly is the name of the manipulative director character within the story. That tug-of-war also explains some of the more puzzling continuity glitches — including the moment when a body falls from a window and appears to execute a physics-defying 90-degree turn into another window. That wasn’t supernatural horror; it was post-production horror.

Still, for all its production scars, Curtains lingers. The atmosphere works. The set pieces work. The mask works. It’s the kind of flawed genre piece that invites discussion — which, in our little Thursday enclave, is half the fun anyway.

Joe missed this session, but he would have given the film a 10 and Chris Gullo’s presentation a 10. The raffle would have gotten a lower score — unless he won. In that case, it would have been a 10 too.