Ack! The Quaalude Horrors Of Cathy's Curse (1977)
In 1973 a movie was released about a demon living within the body of a young girl. Its arrival was a nuclear explosion in the world of cinema, creating urban legends, upending genre expectations and solidifying its place as the last word on possession horror. Cathy's Curse is not that movie.
Cathy fucking sucks. She looks like a cabbage patch kid was merged with the lost souls trapped inside a Welch's Grape Juice commercial. Her voice has a very particular frequency that makes me want to commit violent crime. As if that wasn't enough, she also gets possessed. You'd be forgiven for assuming the curse brought forth in this movie is Cathy's doing, but you'd be wrong. In fact it is Cathy's deceased Aunt Laura who is the one doing the cursing (Both literally and metaphysically). In 1947, a young Laura and her father Robert were killed in a car accident. This is due to the action's of Laura's mother that Robert summarizes deftly as: "You're mother's a bitch!" Three decades later, Cathy and her parents return to the family home. There she discovers a doll belonging to Aunt Laura, as well as her portrait, artifacts which trigger the possession. So long story short you Poutine/Cake eaters (It was a joint Canadian-French production) should have called this Laura's Curse.
The special sauce of Cathy's Curse lies in its execution. Once possessed, Cathy decides she can roast harder than both Statler and Waldorf. No one is safe, from her mother who's in a depressive state after a miscarriage, to the psychic neighbor. For a short time, The Joe C. to Cathy's Kid Rock is Paul, a gregarious alcoholic who looks like Jim Henson in old-age makeup. However, Cathy honors alliances like a reality TV contestant, and soon Paul is dispatched via vague psychic horrors. To that point, the effects work in Cathy's Curse shoot for Italian horror production value, but land more in the realm of Turkish knockoff cinema. The audio effects solidify this vibe, punctuating Cathy's telekinetic evils with sounds that evoke a dying Korg and stepped on Quaaludes. The cherry atop the sundae of this film is that my personal VHS copy from Diamond Entertainment (Hands off ladies, I'm taken) has blown out lighting from prior use, giving the movie a finish that brings to mind waking up from anesthesia after having my wisdom teeth extracted. Except, I didn't wake up to a petulant dipshit with hamburger all over her face.
Reappraisal has rightfully placed Cathy's Curse in the pantheon of schlock royalty, and I stand by that classification wholeheartedly. The post-Exorcist explosion of possession knock-offs is rich with everything from genuinely eerie executions (Beyond The Door) to sweded 1:1 bootlegs (Seytan). Cathy's tale of assholism shoots for eerie and complex, but ends up as cohesive as a fever dream resulting from surgery to correct impacted dentition. Blessed incompetence!
-Dr. Benny Graves
