The Curse (1987 film)

The Curse

Original movie poster
Directed by David Keith
Produced by Ovidio G. Assonitis
Moshe Diamant
Lucio Fulci
Anselmo Parrinello
Written by David Chaskin
Based on "The Colour Out of Space"
by H. P. Lovecraft
Starring
Music by Franco Micalizzi
Cinematography Roberto Forges Davanzati
Edited by Claudio M. Cutry
Distributed by Trans World Entertainment
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release dates
  • September 11, 1987 (1987-09-11)
Running time
 92 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Box office $1,930,001 (USA)

The Curse (also known as The Farm) is a 1987 horror film adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space directed by David Keith. Famed Italian director Lucio Fulci was listed as a co-producer in the credits, and supervised the film's gore effects. Compared to previous adaptations of the Lovecraft story, this version stays closer to the source material.

The film was released theatrically in the United States as The Farm, and was years later released on video as The Curse. Three other Euro-horror "sequels" were distributed on video titled Curse II: The Bite (1989), Curse III: Blood Sacrifice (1991) and Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice (1993); although all four films are completely unrelated to each other except through title.

Plot

Teenage boy Zack lives on a farm in Tellico Plains, Tennessee with his mother Frances, younger sister Alice, stern and pious stepfather Nathan Crane and unpleasant, dim-witted stepbrother Cyrus. One night Frances sneaks out of the house while Nathan is asleep and begins having sex with Mike, a farm-hand who lives in a nearby shack. Suddenly a large meteorite crashes onto the property, emitting an eerie glow. Next morning, Alan Forbes, a physician who lives nearby, visits the crash-site, examining the meteorite which is a large sphere with a hard shell from which a noxious liquid oozes out. Before long, the object dissolves into glowing gelatinous liquid which seeps into the soil. Forbes wants to contact the authorities but is dissuaded by Charlie Davidson, local realtor and head of the chamber of commerce, who worries that the event will discourage the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) from building a new reservoir in the area. Forbes' bored wife Esther also manipulates her husband into keeping quiet, worried their house will lose its value.

The mysterious liquid soon begins to affect the farm. The water from the well grows cloudy and tastes unpleasant, fruit and vegetables grow invitingly large but are rotten and in-edible inside and the livestock begin to behave violently and show severe signs of infection. Alice is attacked and injured by infected chickens and Cyrus is nearly killed by a horse. Frances begins to have large boils growing on her face which soon grotesquely alter her features. She becomes mentally unstable, physically harming herself and attacking her own family. Believing the blight affecting his farm to be a punishment from God for his wife's infidelity, Nathan locks her in their bedroom, not allowing Zack to tell the doctor. Zack keeps himself and Alice free from the infection by consuming clean water and food he steals from Forbes' house.

Forbes secretly obtains a sample from the Crane's well and has it analysed at a nearby lab. The water is found to contain an strange, unknown element which is altering its' metabolic properties. Carl Willis, a TVA representative who is surveying the local area for the planned reservoir, enters the Cranes' house looking for a glass of water. Helping himself from the kitchen faucet, he has just started drinking when he is attacked and nearly killed by Frances, who has gone insane and is horribly mutating. Worried that Forbes is going to alert the authorities, Davidson and Esther arrive at the Crane farm looking for the doctor but are attacked by infected dogs who have turned feral. Esther is mauled to death and Davidson hides himself in the cellar only to be killed by Frances who had been locked in there by Nathan.

By now Nathan and Cyrus are also infected and beginning to go insane. A guilt-ridden Forbes enters the house, hoping to rescue Zack and Alice but he is surprised and murdered by Nathan who then barricades the door. Cyrus attacks Alice but Zack fights him off, hiding his sister in a closet. Nathan corners Zack and is about to kill his stepson when he is stabbed by Willis who has just arrived. The ground begins to glow and heave beneath the house which starts to fall apart. Zack locates his mother just in time to see her mutated corpse dissolve into liquid. Willis gets Zack and Alice out of the house before it collapses and a dying Nathan and Cyrus are both killed by falling debris. Willis drives away from the farm, taking Zack & Alice with him.

In a postscript set some months after those events, a heavily bandaged Willis lies in a hospital bed, having become infected more slowly because he only drank a small amount of the farm's water. He is watching a news report on how authorities are promising that the blight from the farm will be eradicated. The final scene shows a location at night in the nearby countryside where ground and trees begin to heave and break apart, revealing more of the alien glowing liquid spreading onto the surface.

Cast

Production

David Keith used his farm in Tellico Plains, Tennessee, for the exterior scenes. The interior scenes were shot in Rome.[1]

Home media

MGM released the film onto DVD in 2007 as a double feature with its in-name-only sequel, Curse II: The Bite.

The Curse, along with its sequel was released on Blu-ray format from Shout Factory, under its sub label Scream Factory as a double feature on February 23, 2016[2]

Reception

Lovecraft scholar Charles P. Mitchell referred to the film as faithful to the author's original work, but claimed that "[t]he last twenty minutes of the film are so disjointed that they virtually ruin the entire film."[3][4]

In their book Lurker in the Lobby: The Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft, Andrew Migliore and John Strysik write: "This third feature film treatment of [Lovecraft's] favorite story, "The Colour Out of Space", has it all... everything except good dialog, believable acting, and a cohesive plot."[5]

References

  1. ↑ Mitchell, Charles (2001). The complete H.P. Lovecraft filmography. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 113. ISBN 978-0-313-31641-8.
  2. ↑ "The Curse / Curse II: The Bite Blu-ray". blu-ray.com. Retrieved November 19, 2015.
  3. ↑ Mitchell, Charles P. (2001). The complete H.P. Lovecraft filmography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 249. ISBN 0-313-31641-4.
  4. ↑ Mitchell, p. 115
  5. ↑ Andrew Migliore & John Strysik, Lurker in the Lobby: The Guide to the Cinema of H. P. Lovecraft, Night Shade Books, February 1, 2006, ISBN 978-1892389350
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/17/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.