Movie Review by Greg Goodsell
Overbearing stage and screen director Jonathan Stryker (John Vernon) seems intent on casting his longtime star and erstwhile lover Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar) in his new production of “Audra.” Said hot property is about a woman who murders her lover for infidelity and is then sent to a sanitarium. Adherents to the “method,” both Stryker and Sherwood plot to have Sherwood committed to an insane asylum to add authenticity to the role. Sherwood at first adapts to the “snake pit,” but it turns out that it was all a ruse on Stryker’s part to keep her out of the way in order to ogle some fresh new starlets in a most unorthodox audition process at an isolated countryside mansion. Left languishing, Sherwood is sprung from the nuthouse by a friend (in a quickly done single-take scene) and meets Stryker and his chorus line of bimbos at the house. Slowly but surely, a killer in an old hag mask (perhaps symbolic of Eggar’s status as an aging actress?) begins to thin out the cast. A surprise ending that MAKES NO SENSE follows.
As gorgeous and as hopeless as its victims, Curtains is a mess of the first water. Filmed around 1981, then shelved, with additional scenes filmed and inserted later, Curtains was shot on a not-inconsiderable budget of $4 million and is as disjointed and nonsensical as any shot-on-video cheapie. Let us count the ways: one character plunges out a second story window and somersaults through a first floor window; a young male character is introduced in the first scenes at the mansion and then inexplicably disappears; and so on. Slasher films generally are very poorly plotted with ample plot holes but compensate with energy and clever kill scenes. Other than its classic scene of an ice skating session cut short – literally, Curtains is slow and tame even by 1981 standards! It does feature the first example of a severed head found-in-a-toilet, but is otherwise dull and lifeless.