Cathy's Curse (1980)

the leading man is my tpye

Expected more

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

In December of 1947 Jo Ann Gimble absconds with her five year old son George. Her husband and daughter Laura follow in a car (Packard?) and skid off the road to avoid a bunny and burst into flames...which is what happens to every car that goes into a ditch so don't text and drive. In November of 1979 grown up George (Alan Scarfe) moves back into the original house with his nervous breakdown wife Vivian (Beverly Murray) and his daughter Cathy (Randi Allen- only film). Cathy finds an old doll in the attic and sees a picture of Laura accompanied by creep music.Cathy develops telekinetic powers and makes Damien look like a sissy as the ambulance works wheel ruts to and from her home.This is not a film which time has treated well. I watched this on a multi-DVD and it was horribly unrestored. The acting was bad and this could be a "so bad it is good" type of film if you're in the proper mental state as the terror scenes proved to be on the funny side. The Medium who can talk to inanimate objects replaces the Ouija board and saved 10 minutes.Unless you are Randi Allen or a collector far more serious than me, you might want to avoid. As always one man's garbage is another man's cult classic.Guide: "B" word. No sex or nudity.

Cathy's Curse is a bargain basement version of The Omen meets Carrie, which were contemporary horror hits at the time. It's a truly terrible film that has the added disadvantage of seemingly being only available in prints that are in an atrocious state (in the one I saw, the colours were so bad that the blood was purple). But even if this movie was released on high definition it wouldn't change the fact that it's abysmal.The story is senseless. A mother takes her son George away from the family home, leaving the father and daughter. The dad isn't too pleased about this, so he jumps in his car with his little girl Laura. They swerve off the road to avoid a rabbit and the car blows up. Thirty years later, the son returns to the family home with his wife and daughter, Cathy. Pretty much right away Cathy becomes possessed by George's sister Laura's old doll and becomes homicidal, killing various people. Laura seems to be an embittered soul, angered by her early death and wrecks havoc via her brother's offspring.From the above synopsis, I think it's only fair to say that the film, strictly speaking should have been called Laura's Curse. But this is only a glaring detail and this film quite frankly doesn't concern itself with such trivialities. There are many moments of WTF in this film. At one point Cathy teleports from the bottom of the stairs to the top and vice-versa, and her mother, witnessing this, just gets annoyed; she doesn't actually seem to be, well, a little surprised that her daughter has developed the ability to teleport at will, she is merely irritated with her misbehaving child. In another scene Cathy sits down for breakfast and throws her plate across the room at the opposite wall, smashing it to bits, and the housekeeper simply picks it up and seems to imply that she just dropped it, rather than launched it 3 metres over the other side of the room. In other words, people in this movie do not act like Earthlings. A further example of utter madness, is where the medium takes hold of an old family picture then starts talking in creepy voices, getting progressively more and more demented until she smashes the picture on the floor while screaming; she then turns around and says that she's really had a marvellous time and would simply love to pop over again. It's just weird. What perhaps makes these people all the stranger is that absolutely no one can act. The performances are universally atrocious. The handyman is abysmal too, although it's maybe not surprising seeing as he appears to be Mick Fleetwood from Fleetwood Mac in a rare acting appearance.There are one or two occasions when Cathy's Curse is almost effective. And it can't be argued that it's pretty bizarre throughout. But despite all this, it drags. The unintentional hilarity is something to behold but you really need some buddies and beer to enjoy this one.

Seeing multiple pages of commentary on IMDb is an excellent way to judge the "watchability" of any film. Some love the work, some hate it, some are indifferent, but ALL feel compelled to give up a little bit of their lives to talk about it. Here's my 5 minutes worth. Cathy's Curse is a godawful thing. A stupid plot, community theater acting, really inept production work...and yet, for all that, there's something strangely addictive about this movie. If you don't believe, just Google and you'll see. For a crappy late-70's throwaway there's a lot of stuff out there. Ask the movie poster sellers (reproduction and authentic), the purveyors of film media and the endless horror sites and blogs, Cathy's Curse is a genuine cash stream. I myself own far too many horror and giallo films and even the worst of them is better than Cathy's Curse, but for odd chemical reasons this movie truly rocks. From Beverly Murray's spooky eyes and (you would assume disqualifying) speech impediment to Roy Witham as the wonderfully drunken caretaker & semi-lecherous babysitter, I just can't get enough. There are odd character's and sub-plots that appear and disappear at random. A dog who's got it all figured out in the first couple of minutes and a white statuette that Daddy likes a little too much, but somehow never notices when it goes missing. Great stuff! The music is pretty cool too, very odd funky. I actually own 6 copies, (2 on DVD & 4 on VHS) and still haven't seen a complete version of the film because they're all different! It's a public domain hell. As of this writing all the commercially available DVD versions are cut and missing important scenes ranging from long minutes to a few seconds. Why was this done? Probably nobody knows. The missing scenes are completely inoffensive and integral to the plot. Just more mystery. Some, but not all of the VHS versions are also cut. The DVD's all seem to use the same horrible (and I mean HORRIBLE!) print. VHS copies, even those in EP are much-much better. I have a mid-80's SP copy which is a revelation and luminous but is also the cut version. I have an EP copy which is almost complete but is missing one scene of about 15 seconds that's on the cut versions! It's even more complicated but you get the idea. If you're thinking about watching the film avoid the DVD's like death itself. They're an embarrassment and the people selling them should be ashamed. It's just plain old VHS for the best (such as it is) experience. I know plenty of you really hate this movie and importantly declare it "worst ever", and maybe it is. But hey! Here-you-are reading and writing about it. The thing is in your head, under your skin and all over the net. Clearly you can't ignore it or you wouldn't be here...Me, I dig the film for a lot of reasons, but mostly because Cathy really DOES curse & that's truly the BEST part of all.

This is just a thrown together, anything goes horror movie. There is almost no groundwork set for the characters. There has been a horrible fiery car accident which kills a man and his young daughter. Then, later, her brother and his wife and daughter move into he old house. For whatever reason, the first daughter decides to inhabit the new girl and she becomes evil and dangerous. The mother is tortured for some reason, even though she is not a bad person. I suppose it's an attack on women, whom the original father didn't think much of. There are a series of attacks, using a doll, and hypnotic images, to do away with people who aren't liked. So it goes. Not much here, not to mention an incredibly awful print.