Movies That Suck: Cathy's Curse (1977)

Girl, Carrie and Damien could kill you with their pinkies.

I'm almost tempted to just say, "Fuck this movie," and leave it at that. Jesus, this movie blows the big one! It's another that I have to "thank" my friend Jeff Burr for, as I had never heard of it until he left it, among other DVDs, with me in 2016. I wasn't expecting much, as the disc was in one of those public domain, bargain bin slips with cover art rather than an actual case, and the plot synopsis on the back was rather vague, talking about a man's daughter becoming possessed by the vengeful spirit of his dead sister, but I had no idea what I was getting into when I finally did watch it that November. First of all, that thing had one of the absolute worst transfers I'd ever seen in my life, even for a public domain release. It really did look like somebody had used the print to wipe their butt after taking a massive dump. Second, the cover, depicting a woman in Goth makeup and black bondage gear, sporting a surgical saw, had nothing to do with the movie itself. And third, there was the movie itself, a combination of The Exorcist and Carrie, with a little bit of The Omen and some haunted house tropes thrown in for good measure. Regardless of what it was trying to be, it was so inept, poorly-made, badly-acted, and horribly structured that it can only be described as a lame miracle. I've watched it a couple of times since then, just to keep it fresh in my mind, and as you can guess, it didn't improve at all. Normally, I can find some good even in the worst movies possible, but this is going to be a rare instance where, save for one little paragraph, you will see no compliments at all, as virtually everything about this movie sucks hard. That makes it even more dumbfounding for me to know that, not only does it have something of a cult following, with some seeing it as so bad, it's good, but it also got a Blu-Ray release from Severin Films in 2017 (complete with an enamel pin, no less). If anyone who does enjoy the film sees this review, I can respect how you feel and I'm not going to call you an idiot by any means, but I don't get how anyone can derive something other than mind-numbing boredom and stupidity from it.

In December of 1947, Christopher Gimble comes home to discover that his wife, Joanne, has abandoned him and their daughter, Laura, having taken Laura's brother, George, with her. The two of them pile into his car and drive away, only for Christopher to crash off the side of the road when he swerves to avoid hitting a rabbit. He's killed instantly and Laura, trapped inside the car, is slowly burned to death when it catches fire. Over thirty years later, in November of 1979, George, now married and with a daughter of his own, moves back to his old family home after his wife, Vivian, suffers a miscarriage, followed by a nervous breakdown. Once they've moved in, things seem to be going nicely, despite Vivian still being a bit on edge, and their eight-year old daughter, Cathy, appears to be adjusting well and making some new friends. But things start to change when, while exploring the house one day, Cathy wanders into the attic and finds an old, dirty doll, as well as a painting of Laura. From then on, Cathy begins to become more distant, bratty, and defiant, as well as destructive and sadistic, attempting to stab one of her new friends in the eye and seemingly causes her babysitter to fall out a second floor window to her death. Vivian witnesses the latter incident, seeing enough to know that Cathy was likely responsible, and it proves to be detrimental to her physical and mental well-being, as she becomes bed-ridden. After an encounter with her daughter where she sees her newly-gained, supernatural powers, Vivian is taken to the hospital for several days. Cathy then influences the Gimbles' handyman, Paul, getting him drunk in order to keep him in line, and it isn't long before his dog, Sneaker, who was clearly scared of Cathy, is found dead, with bloody lesions on her body. More people soon fall prey to Cathy and Vivian's deteriorating condition, coupled with her belief that there is something evil about her daughter, starts to drive her and George apart, eventually forcing her to face it herself.

The film is so incompetent that I initially guessed that it would be the only credit on the director's, French-born Eddy Matalon, filmography, but much to surprise, he's managed to remain fairly active in the film industry since the early 60's. After writing and directing a couple of documentary shorts, his first feature was 1966's The Mad Dog and he followed that up with a handful of shorts and specials centered around Brigitte Bardot. In the 70's, he made films with such eye-catching titles as Dangerous When Aroused and Hotel of Free Love (one of many he directed under the pseudonym of Jack Angel), and after Cathy's Curse, he directed 1978's Blackout, with James Mitchum and Robert Carradine, 1979's Marrakesh Cult, and 1993's Sweet Killing, the last theatrical film he directed. None of these movies have the greatest ratings on IMDB, with some of them even being lower than Cathy's Curse, but regardless, after a long hiatus from filmmaking, Matalon returned in 2002 by writing the story for the Armand Assante film, Partners in Action, and, in 2019, produced two films: a short film called The Tea at the Bottom of the Teapot and a film called Night Angels: a new threat.

Be it because of bad acting or the lackluster material they're given to work with, I come away from this movie not particularly liking or caring about any of the characters. The idea that George Gimble (Alan Scarfe) was taken away from his father and sister by his mother when he was a young boy is never brought up outside of the opening, nor is it explained why he decided to move his family into his old house, especially after his wife has just lost a baby and had a nervous breakdown. In fact, his role in the story is virtually nonexistent, as he does nothing more than act as a confused father/husband who doesn't understand what's going on, as he never witnesses anything supernatural until the climax, and does his best to be there for his ailing wife and comfort his daughter. Because of Vivian's condition and her being the one who suffers the most from Cathy's possession, George believes his wife's claims are nothing more than delusions and this belief starts to put a strain on their marriage. In a scene near the end of the movie, he gets really mean about with her, telling her that she's making their lives unbearable and that he's not going to stand for her blaming Cathy for everything anymore. Following that, he goes off to his job at a construction site and later, after Vivian suffers another attack, he has no choice but to leave Paul, the handyman, in charge of the household, despite the fact that he's gotten drunk while doing so before. It's only when he tries to call the house while at the site and doesn't get an answer that he rushes home in time to find Vivian being chased by Cathy, now fully-possessed by Laura. However, it doesn't matter that he's there, as he has no part in his daughter finally being released from Laura's grip.

Vivian (Beverly Murray) has nothing to do in the film other than be George's shaken wife and the main target of Cathy's possession. She's already in a bad way when she first moves into the house, having had a nervous breakdown upon losing her baby, which has left her on edge and liable to snap at George for over-analyzing everything Cathy does, accusing him of thinking that she's going to have a breakdown as well. She's also paranoid and, at one point, believes that there's someone watching from her outside, when it turns out to simply be some local children roaming around. Her fragile mental state is further compromised when Cathy's demeanor begins to change, as she becomes distant, speaks less and less, is snippy and violent towards others, and starts carrying around an old doll that Vivian tries to get rid of because she finds it to be filthy. A particularly bad blow is when Mary, the maid, falls out a window to her death while watching Cathy and Vivian spots Cathy in the window immediately afterward, causing her to have another breakdown. She becomes afraid of Cathy and tries to warn George about what she saw but is ultimately sent to a hospital after she witnesses the full extent of her daughter's new powers. Things don't get any better when she comes home, as there's a moment where she's left alone and all the windows and doors shut by themselves, locking her out and causing her to black out in fright. Even worse, despite the things that Cathy does to her, including intentionally scratching her face, George writes it all off as delusions and gives her a verbal lashing over trying to blame it on Cathy. Following that, she has another episode when, while taking a bath, the tub fills up with blood and leeches appear on her body. Vivian spends most of the third act in something of a catatonic state, talking out of her head, but when she sees Cathy kill Paul outside, she gets proactive enough to get up and, eventually finding that Cathy is now completely possessed, take the doll from her. In the end, she rips the doll's eyes out and that appears to be all that it takes to exorcise Laura's spirit and return Cathy to normal.

As I hinted at in the introduction, Cathy (Randi Allen) is ostensibly a combination of Regan MacNeil and Carrie White, but with none of the impact and memorability of either one. In the very short time before she gets possessed, despite the suggestion that she's affected by her mother's breakdown, Cathy is normal to the point of being bland; in fact, she's so boring that she only becomes memorable after Laura possesses her, and even that's nothing special. When Laura takes control, Cathy becomes a brat who is distant and aloof towards her mother, is dangerously mean-spirited to the point where she tries to stab a little girl in the eye, and becomes very possessive of a raggedy, old doll she finds up in the attic, forcing Mary out the window to her death when she picks it up. While not as profane as Regan becomes when the demon takes hold of her, Cathy also becomes a bit of a potty-mouth during a scene when Agatha, a medium who met Vivian before, tries to see her again, unaware that she's at the hospital. Not wanting her there, Cathy hurls a number of insults at Agatha, such as "old bitch," "fat whore," and, "fat, dried up whore," adding that her mother is currently in the nuthouse. There are moments where Cathy appears to be aware of what's happening and is unable to do anything about it but, for the most part, Laura is in control and bestows upon Cathy a number of supernatural abilities, like being able to teleport, imitate other people's voices, cause people to see things, levitate and shatter objects without touching them, and make food rot instantly, among others. As the movie goes on, she continually targets Vivian, as well as Paul when she doesn't have him drunk and susceptible to her will, and by the end, her face is covered in burn marks, showing that Laura has completely taken over. At least, that is until Vivian destroys the doll, exorcising Laura's spirit, and freeing Cathy. Whatever.

The only character who leaves any kind of impression is Paul (Roy Witham), the Gimbles' English handyman who, after Mary's death, is given the job of looking after Cathy while Vivian is in the hospital and George is busy with work. While level-headed for the most part, and surprised when his usually friendly dog, Sneaker, refuses to have anything to do with Cathy, Paul gets drunk while watching her and joins her in insulting and chasing Agatha, the medium, out of the house when she comes by to see Vivian. Following that is a bizarre scene where, as Paul gets more drunk, Cathy does something to him that makes him more or less freeze in place, allowing her to conjure a couple of snakes out of the table's drawer, rats to appear around his feet, and a tarantula popping up on his shoulder. Despite coming to his senses and being a bit weirded out by this, Paul's reaction is merely to take another drink. The next day, Paul is dealt a blow when Sneaker is discovered to have been killed, vowing revenge on whoever did it. Later on, he randomly demands that Cathy allow him to burn the doll that she's keeping with her and chases her around the yard, trying to get at it, while she mocks him for it. Sounding positively desperate as he tries to grab it, he ultimately ends up with a cut on his right hand and collapses to the ground, not to be seen again until near the end when George, desperate for someone to look after Cathy and the ailing Vivian, asks him to do it once more. He promises not to drink again and he keeps that promise, looking after Vivian and dealing with her nonsensical raving. Eventually, she asks Paul to save Cathy and when he tries to go look in on her, Cathy forces him outside on the lawn and kills him. Vivian later finds his body, the skin flayed off his face.

The film is full of characters who you expect to become significant in the story but either don't last long or appear for one scene and subsequently disappear completely. Mary (Dorothy Davis), the kindly housekeeper who worked for George's father years before, is left to look after Cathy early on and soon runs afoul of her worsening personality. She's quite forgiving when Cathy suddenly throws a bowl of cereal off the table, only to then get screamed at when she kisses her upon seeing that she's fixed herself another bowl. However, Mary's fate is sealed when she finds Cathy's doll up in her bedroom and is then forced out the window behind her, falling to her death, much to Vivian's horror, especially since she glimpses Cathy looking out the window afterward. Margaret Burton (Renee Girard) is a local woman whose children meet Cathy early on, as they tend to snoop around the grounds, and she briefly becomes a friend to Vivian. However, when Cathy ends up nearly stabbing her young daughter, Geraldine, in the eye during a play-date, Margaret takes her kids and leaves, never to return. Then, there's Agatha (Mary Morter), a friend of Margaret's who visits the Gimbles while the Burton children play with Cathy outside. Explaining that she's a medium who can sense an old object's history simply by touching it, she attempts to demonstrate with an old photo of George's father, only to get bombarded with images and sounds of the accident that killed both him and Laura. This horrifies her to the point where she screams and throws the picture to the floor, shattering it, just as Vivian and Margaret run outside to find what happened between Cathy and the Burton kids. Regaining her senses, Agatha apologizes for what happened with her, explaining that an object's history usually doesn't come through that easily, before leaving. Later, unaware that Vivian has ended up in the hospital, she drops by to see her, only to get chased out of the house by Cathy and the drunken Paul, who hurl a number of insults at her before she finally does leave. The next day, Agatha tries to contact Vivian again and appears to get her on the telephone. She goes to the house and is drawn up into the attic by what sounds like Vivian's voice calling to her, only to be trapped up there by the possessed Cathy who, among other things, shows her a haggard version of herself who hits her with the line, "Medium? I'd say extra-rare piece of shit!" Horrified by the freakish sights and sounds she's hit with, Agatha is told to leave and never come back or speak of what she's seen. She agrees to this and runs out of the attic, through the house's front door, and is never seen again.

Lt. O'Reilly (Sonny Forbes, or, as I like to call him, not-Scatman Crothers) is a prime example of someone who you think is going to be significant but appears in just one scene and is never seen again. He's there to talk with George following the death of Mary, asking him the usual questions, and also overhears Vivian's raving about what happened. There's a moment where he decides to see if Sneaker will bark for no reason, calling a police officer over, and his point is proven when Sneaker snarls and growls ferociously at the man. None of this proves to be important and neither does O'Reilly himself, as he tells George that they'll have to wait for the autopsy report and asks George where he'll be in the next few days, in case he needs to find him. Apparently, he never did. And though he has more scenes, Vivian's doctor (Hubert Noel) is even more superficial, as he's always seen doing nothing but giving her some care and treatment that proves to be useless in the long run.

Despite being the cause of everything that happens in the film, Laura (Linda Koot) is as underdeveloped as anyone else in the cast, as all you know about her from the opening is that her mother abandoned her and her father and that she died with her father when he crashed his car off the road. Her motivation for what she does as a spirit and what exactly is her endgame is never explained at all. You don't know why she possesses Cathy, why she makes her do all the horrible things she does, why she inexplicably tries to make her kill herself at one point (I'll get into that in a minute), or why she targets Vivian so much. It is vaguely implied that she's attacking Vivian because of the hatred she feels towards her own mother for taking George and leaving her alone, as well as, by extension, a possible hatred she's developed for all women (likely influenced by her father, as we'll get into), but that doesn't explain why she makes Cathy nearly stab one of Margaret's kids in the eye, screw around with Paul and ultimately kill him, and not do anything to George, given that their mother chose him over her (it's actually easy to forget that George was her brother, as it's never mentioned by anyone). There is some motivation behind why she kills Mary, as she picked up the doll that Laura's spirit appears to inhabit and, subsequently, saw a glimpse of what was going on, but even in that case, Laura ends up needlessly exposing herself completely to Mary before she orders Cathy to kill her. Ambiguity may often be a nice thing to have but, in this case, it just makes Laura come off as a spoiled brat of a child who, in death, has now become dangerous because of the supernatural abilities she has, which I don't think was the intention. (Hell, that old picture of her in the attic looks sinister even when its eyes aren't glowing green!) Really, the only thing that's definitely clear is why she drives Agatha away from the house since, being a medium, she's already picked up on what happened in the past and could possibly sense Laura's presence in the house. And yeah, Laura's spirit is apparently centered inside that doll that Cathy finds up in the attic, which she was carrying the night she died (how it managed to make it back inside the house and why it isn't burned is anyone's guess). Therefore, when Vivian rips the doll's eyes out at the end, it exorcises Laura and frees Cathy. Speaking of which, you come to blatantly see how she's taking control of Cathy, with her reflection appearing in a mirror when Cathy looks at herself and with burn marks appearing on Cathy's face during the climax.

Finally, the only thing that can be said about Christopher Gimble (Peter MacNeill), George and Laura's father, is that he likely influenced Laura's hatred of her mother and women in general. His most memorable line in the movie is to tell her, "Your mother's a bitch!", before attempting to drive off with her, and when Cathy is later playing with the Burton kids and having them reenact the accident, she has the one boy say, "All women are bitches!" Clearly, Gimble didn't soften the blow for Laura about what happened with her mother, a notion that's further compounded with how Agatha, at one point, channels his voice yelling, likely, at Laura, "Shut up! Your mother's gone!" Regardless, he dies before the real story starts, so he's not worth dwelling upon.

I'm sure, like me, you've seen a lot of horrendous public domain transfers: tapes and DVDs that either look very washed out and de-saturated or are so dark that it's often nigh impossible to tell what's going on half the time. But, I guarantee you, as bad as some of those get, none of them can compare with how repugnant-looking the public domain, and most common version, of Cathy's Curse is. If you've never seen this before, I'm sure that these screenshots will make you understand why I was so taken aback when I first watched the movie on that cheap DVD Jeff left with me. I wasn't expecting great quality but I did not expect a print where virtually all of the color had been drained out and with ugly green and brown films on it that, as I said before, make it look like somebody had used it as toilet paper. Mind you, I could tell what was going on, and the sound was passable enough, but imagine having to look at this for almost 90 minutes! Ugh! And trust me, there are much worse-looking shots in that version. I just decided to have mercy on you. Fortunately, there is now a good-looking print of the film available, and all of the screencaps you've been seeing up to now and will see from here on out will come from that print. As you can see from all those shots, when you have a nice version to watch, the movie doesn't look half-bad. It still may be a piece of shit, mind you, but at least it's no longer a piece of shit that literally assaults your eyes as well as your brain.

There are so many reasons why this movie is a horrendous mess that I don't know where to begin. How about we start with how sloppy the editing is? There are a number of awkward and abrupt cuts and fades to black, sometimes in the transition from one scene to another or within a scene itself. The moment at the beginning where  Christopher Gimble tells Laura that her mother is a bitch has a sudden shift from him sitting on the edge of the bed, talking to her, to a sudden close-up of his face as he says the line to her, and when it cuts back to the wide-shot, he's now standing. It sounds like I'm nitpicking but trust me, when you see it in action, it's jarring. A more blatant example comes when, after the incident with the Burton children, Vivian tries to get Cathy to explain what happened, asking her, "Are you going to tell me what went on here?", when the film suddenly fades to black. I guess not! Later, after the prolonged moment when Cathy makes Paul freeze in place at the table and conjures up a bunch of creepy-crawlies around him, freaking him out, she asks him, "Don't you like it, good old Paul?"... and then, we fade to another scene. So, okay, enough of that. These cuts and transitions are done so poorly, that it's possible to be confused about what time of day the current scene is occurring or how long it's been since the previous one. I assume that, because they occur one after the other, the scenes with Cathy taunting Paul, Agatha's ill-advised visit to the Gimble house, George and Vivian having dinner, and Vivian having a breakdown when she's locked out of the house all happen within the same day but I thought the scene at the restaurant with George and Vivian was at night, only for it to still be daytime when the next scene occurs. One that confused the crap out of me when I first saw it is a sudden cut from Vivian freaking out in the bathroom, as she sees blood gushing out of the faucet and leeches suddenly appear on her skin, to the doctor walking out a front door and to his parked car. Initially, I didn't know who that was, because the doctor is so forgettable, but then, when I realized who he was, I didn't know why the movie suddenly cut from him leaving his office and then back to the house, where George is giving instructions to Paul. Looking at it more carefully, I've now learned that shot of the doctor was him leaving the Gimble house, no doubt after tending to Vivian, but the editing is done so poorly that, for a long time, I didn't know! And in the buildup to that aforementioned scene with Vivian, the film, for no reason, cuts back and forth from her preparing her bath to George driving to work, suggesting that he's going to turn around and apologize to her for yelling the way he did, but he never does.

The story plays out as a series of random episodes, with characters and subplots being introduced, only to never be resolved. Among them are George being taken by his mother without Laura; the idea that Vivian recently lost a baby; the small section where Agatha gets a taste of what happened in the past and then tries to talk to Vivian about something (likely, the way Paul and Cathy treated her the last time she came by the house); the investigation into Mary's death; and all of the unmotivated things that Laura's spirit does, like the bizarre moment with Paul and the snakes, rats, and tarantula, and all of the random attacks on Vivian. Speaking of Laura, a major thing she does that makes no sense to me at all is when she makes Cathy go into this freezing cold lake, in which she nearly drowns. Granted, I still don't understand why she possesses Cathy and makes her do so many awful things to begin with, but regardless, if she's using Cathy as a type of vessel, why in God's name does she suddenly try to make her kill herself?! And what would Laura have done if she succeeded? It's like the screenwriters had only a basic concept and no story, so they just jotted down whatever they came up with in order to pad the movie out to 87 minutes.

One thing that always aggravates me in horror movies is when people don't react rationally to the freaky stuff that's going on around them. That's one of the reasons why I'm not a fan of The Evil Dead, as I feel the characters in that movie either sometimes come off as totally oblivious to what's happening to them or doesn't seem to grasp the full extent of it. Cathy's Curse has a handful of those types of moments and the movie is all the poorer for it. Let's get the biggest one out of the way immediately: there's a scene between Vivian and Cathy on the stairs and Cathy starts teleporting all over the place when her mother tries to ask her where she was when Mary fell out of the window. What's Vivian's reaction? She gets angry that Cathy won't answer her question and, when she disappears right in front of her and then reappears on the floor above her, she yells, "No use trying to hide! I saw you there with my own two eyes! Do you understand?!" Do you not understand that your daughter just teleported from the bottom of the stairs to the landing above you?! Speaking of Vivian, early on, when the door to the attic closes while she's looking for Cathy, she acts as though Cathy pulled it to and held it closed, when it was plain to see that it closed by itself. Another example is when Paul comes out of the spell that Cathy put him under and finds the tarantula on his arm. While noticeably weirded out by this, instead of immediately flicking it off his arm and reacting to the rats and snakes that are possibly still around his hands and feet, he just takes another swig of liquor. He's supposed to be drunk, yeah, but even if you were completely plastered, wouldn't you be like, "Agh! What are these things doing around me?!", and kick them away, jump up, or something? And afterward, Paul never brings it up to Cathy, as though it never happened. Did he think he dreamed it all or he experienced that in place of pink elephants? Finally, we have a milder example, when Cathy throws her bowl of cereal against the wall, and Mary, instead of scolding her, says, "It's nothing. Don't worry about it, child?" Talk about a laid back babysitter! And then, she only picks up a couple of the many pieces of the shattered bowl on the floor and tells her, "There, it's all done." Eddy Matalon, do you just not know how people would normally react to such things?

I'm hesitant to refer to the stuff you see in the movie as "special effects" because most of it is amateurish and some of it is anything but special. Yeah, it's really not fair to pick on a movie that was made for very little money, but I can't help it; this stuff is simply jaw-dropping. There are a few effects that, at best, are pulled off in an okay manner, such as a shot of a bedspread moving down by itself, the doll sometimes slightly moving by itself, a repeated shot of the eyes of a painting of Laura glowing an eerie green, the blood pouring out of the bathtub faucet and the leeches that appear on Vivian's back during that same scene, and the scene where a tray of food that Cathy is carrying suddenly rots, which is an interesting piece of animation, and it helps that most of this material isn't held on for very long. But, all that said, there are other effects which are unforgivably shoddy. In the scenes where Laura's reflection suddenly disappears from the mirror, or when Cathy is teleporting around, instead of a creepy fade, they use a jump cut, where she disappears instantly within frames, and it wreaks of cheapness. Another one is when, near the end of the movie, Cathy forces Paul down the stairs and suddenly hits him with a malformed, jagged piece of light that, following an obvious jump-cut, leaves a big laceration on his torso. It's a bizarre, abstract effect and, when it happens, it's likely you won't even be sure what you're looking at. Speaking of the cut that appears on Paul, the makeup effects in the film aren't great by any means (save for maybe a shot of Paul with the skin on his face flayed off) but again, fortunately, the camera doesn't linger on them for too long... that is, until you get to the end of the movie, when Cathy suddenly has Laura's burn scars covering her face. As you can see, she's no Freddy Krueger, as it looks more like she's got a bunch of clay and mud on her face rather than burned skin.

After all of this merciless bashing, you may be wondering if there's anything genuinely good I can say about this movie. If I have to try to pick something, I would have to say that the story's taking place in the cold winter, with snow here and there on the ground, often overcast skies, and that it's likely set in Canada, where it was filmed, does give it something of a miserable, downbeat atmosphere. The house itself is nothing that special in terms of how it looks, both on the inside and out, but the scene where Cathy first wanders into the attic, which is cluttered with all kinds of old junk, like creaky furniture, weird sculptures and paintings, old books, and the doll, all of which is covered in cobwebs, is a tad bit eerie. It kind of makes me think of when I would go up to the second level of my grandparents' old house by myself and would try to find what I was looking for and hurry back down, as it could get a bit spooky up there. And like I mentioned earlier, that old painting of Laura up there is kind of unsettling to look at, glowing eyes or not.

Okay, that's enough praising. Let's get back to dissecting this movie's bullshit, namely by talking about how ridiculous and silly the scenes that are meant to be scary come off. After starting off relatively okay, you get a moment about twenty minutes in where, while Cathy is playing with Margaret Burton's children outside, Vivian is inside, talking with Margaret and her friend, Agatha, about the latter's psychic powers. Saying that she can pick up on an object's history simply by touching it, she has Vivian give her an old picture of George's father in order to demonstrate. As she holds it, outside Cathy has the kids play a game called "accident," where she has two of the kids, the young girl, Geraldine, and the younger of the boys, Peter, reenact what happened to Laura years ago. Initially, it's a bit uncomfortably effective, as Cathy has the two kids spout the words that Laura and Christopher Gimble exchanged about her mother abandoning them, including, "All women are bitches," but then, we get hit with a crazy montage of Agatha channeling what happened. She says what Laura said in her own voice, as well as in both Laura's and Christopher's actual voices, and we see rapid flashbacks of the accident, accompanied by cuts to Vivian and Margaret's reactions and the sound of Laura yelling for her father to open the door and let her out. It sounds disturbing, and after that, we see Cathy pulling out a piece of metal wire, intending to go for Geraldine's eye with it, but then, we cut back to Agatha screaming bloody murder, throwing the picture to the floor, and melodramatically putting her face in her hands while crying. The mothers run outside when they hear the kids calling for them and find Geraldine lying on the ground, her brothers gathered around her. Vivian tries to make Cathy explain what happened but she doesn't get any answer, and Margaret, seeing the bloody spot near Geraldine's eye, quickly takes her children and leaves. To top it off, Agatha walks out of the house, now perfectly fine, commenting on how the children, "Got themselves into a situation they just couldn't handle," and apologizes to Vivian if her demonstration upset her. You see what I mean when I talk about how people in this movie don't react rationally to the weird stuff that happens to them? And it ends with that abrupt fade-to-black when Vivian, again, tries to get Cathy to explain what happened. Also, she apparently does something to Vivian's hand when she tries to take it but whatever it is remains unclear.

That night, there's a moment where Vivian takes the doll out of Cathy's room while she's sleeping, and while walking down the hall, she's surprised by George, who has a certain something on his mind. The two of them go to their bedroom and start making out on the bed, Vivian dropping the doll on the floor and George stepping on it as he maneuvers her over to the bed. The makeout session goes on for a little bit, when they hear Sneaker, Paul's dog, barking outside. They try to ignore it, when we suddenly cut to Cathy repeatedly banging her head on her pillow, as Sneaker's barking outside intensifies. Vivian hears that Cathy is whining loudly and she and George run to her bedroom, where Vivian demands to know what's wrong. She starts screaming about wanting her doll and Georges goes to the bedroom, grabs the doll, and brings it to her. Cathy grabs the doll and lays back down in bed with it, as George, aggravated with Sneaker's continuous barking, opens the window and yells at her to shut up, calling her a stupid bitch. She doesn't stop when George closes the window but, seeing that Cathy has fallen back asleep, he and Vivian leave the room. I'm thinking that Cathy repeatedly smacking her head against the pillow was meant to be this movie's answer to the scene in The Exorcist where Regan is flopping around on the bed, only this is unintentionally funny rather than disturbing.

The next day, Vivian leaves Mary to look after Cathy while she heads into town. After Cathy wakes up and looks at herself in the mirror, only to see Laura's reflection staring back at her, she goes downstairs and indignantly throws her bowl of cereal against the wall. Despite this, Mary isn't upset, and is pleased when Cathy fixes herself another bowl, only to get blindsided when the girl yells at her for kissing her on the forehead. Later, Cathy is jumping rope outside, singing Mary Had a Little Lamb to herself, while Mary tidies up in her bedroom. She finds the doll and is clearly repulsed by it, when Cathy shows up in the doorway and speaks in a distorted voice, yelling, "Let me go!" The voice sounds like a normal human voice that's slowed down and, again, I think it's this movie's version of the demon voice that came out of Regan, only it's impossible to take seriously. Mary tries to give the doll to Cathy but it suddenly launches out of her hands, with Cathy catching it. Outside, Vivian comes back with some groceries, while upstairs, Cathy continues speaking in that voice, intoning, "She's seen me. Kill her!" She says this repeatedly and points the doll at Mary, who covers her ears when the room is filled with a high-pitched sound that grows louder and louder. Cathy forces Mary back until she falls out the window behind her, landing in front of Vivian, who wandered around behind the house. Looking at the body, Vivian looks up and sees Cathy glancing out the window before ducking back in. Later, as the police try to figure out what happened, they hear Vivian talking out of her head about what she saw (she has so many melodramatic pauses that William Shatner would be telling her to ease up on it), saying stuff like, "That damn window!", and yelling, "My baby!"

While bringing Vivian a tray of food that night, Cathy stops next to the door that leads to the attic and stares ahead, with the food suddenly decaying and becoming rotten, and a glass of pink juice turning blood-red, as she stands there. She then takes it into Vivian's bedroom, sets it down on the nightstand, and reaches to touch her face, when Vivian suddenly awakes and screams. George comes running in and has to try to calm Vivian as she begins to rave, saying that she saw Cathy at the window and that she doesn't know who she is anymore. George calls the doctor, and tells Cathy to kiss her mother good night but she ignores him and walks out of the room. She's then shown crying for her mother in bed, as the doll turns its head around while sitting nearby. Nice enough, but then, the next day, we get another bit of silliness that ruins it, which is when Cathy starts teleporting around Vivian when she confronts her on the stairs. After she does it several times, Cathy makes the entire inside of the house shake violently, as if there's an earthquake, and Vivian screams and yells before collapsing in fright. Following that, she's taken away to the hospital.

Not wanting to be sent to a cousin's house during the time that Vivian is in the hospital, Cathy convinces George to let her stay at the house and so, he gets Paul to look after her. There's a moment where Paul tries to get Cathy to be friendly with the normally docile Sneaker but the dog makes it clear she wants nothing to do with her and backs away, much to Paul's surprise. That night, Agatha drops by in order to visit Vivian, but when she goes into the house, she finds Cathy being looked after by a very drunk Paul, whom Cathy is plying with booze. When Cathy insists that she doesn't know Agatha, despite her saying the contrary, the drunken Paul becomes indignant and insulting towards Agatha, backing her back down the stairs, calling her an old bitch and yelling at her to get out. There's a moment where Cathy joins Paul in insulting her, telling her that her mother is in the nuthouse, adding, "Why don't you join her over there?" Finally, Paul manages to send Agatha running out the front door. He then goes into the kitchen, sits down at the table, and pours himself some more booze. Cathy is only too happy to supply him with more liquor when he gulps down what he poured himself, and as he starts drinking some more, she sits on a nearby counter and watches him. Then comes the bizarre scene where she does something to him, as he freezes in place, but still seems to be conscious as he stares straight ahead. A drawer on the table opens by itself and a couple of snakes slither out onto the table, maneuvering around his hands. A bunch of rats appear around his feet, which he seems aware of, as he tries to move his feet away from them, and a tarantula appears on his arm near the shoulder. It crawls around his neck (he blinks here, which I don't think he was supposed to do) and then ends up on his hand, as he comes out of the hold that Cathy has on him and simply drinks some more rather than flicking the spider and snakes off him. Later that night, when George gets home, you see that Sneaker is sensing something she doesn't like, as she backs away while whining; at the same time, Cathy is shown to be looking ahead, a strange light highlighting the space around her eyes. The next day, Sneaker is found dead, with lesions on her body, and Paul is sure that someone killed her, swearing revenge on whoever did it. Next, there's a random moment where Cathy is playing with the doll outside, when Paul suddenly shows up and demands she let him burn it. This is the first time he's even seen her with it but no explanation is given as to why he wants to burn it. In any case, Cathy takes the opportunity to play keep-away with Paul, mocking him as he tries to get at it, yelling at her in desperation over it. He manages to grab it but ends up with a nasty cut on the palm of his hand and collapses to the ground as Cathy runs off.

Next, we get the final scene with Agatha, and it's even dumber than the two previous ones. In town, Agatha calls the Gimble house and manages to get ahold of someone whom she seems to think is Vivian and is allowed to come back over to the house. Taking a taxi there, she lets herself in and hears Vivian's voice calling her upstairs, specifically up in the attic. Once up there, Agatha finds that the person who was calling her was actually Cathy, who spins around in a rotating leather chair as if she's Blofeld and the doll is her cat. She again tells Agatha that Vivian is in the nuthouse, when her voice echoes through the room, "That dirty bitch left us, my father and me!" The eyes of Laura's painting suddenly light up with a green glow and Agatha recoils in fear from the sound of distorted laughing, as the door slams shut behind her and it becomes darker in there. When the light returns, we now see an older, more haggard vision of Agatha, who sneers, "Well, if it isn't the great medium herself. Medium? I'd say extra rare piece of shit!" (God, that line is ridiculous.) There's more laughing and Cathy tells Agatha, "Go on, you filthy female cow. Make us laugh." Her older form then tells Agatha to leave the house, never return, and never tell anyone what's happened, as Agatha's ears are assaulted by the same unpleasant sound that tormented Mary before her death, as both of her forms make melodramatic faces. Agatha begs for Cathy to let her go, only to get mocked by those voices again, one of which repeats the line Cathy said. As the doll starts to rise up by itself, Agatha can take no more and runs out the door, stumbling in the front yard as she flees the scene, and the movie abruptly cuts to George and Vivian having dinner (again, I thought she was still in the hospital; when is this taking place?!)

George takes Vivian home that afternoon, but when they get there, Vivian, after only being inside the house for less than two seconds, tells George that she can't find Cathy. Thinking she may be visiting Paul, who had a "slight accident," George goes to fetch her. Vivian then tries to go back inside, only for the door to suddenly close and lock her out. Unable to get it open, she walks out in front of the house and sees two windows close, as well as the garage door when she tries to go in through there. She tries the side door but that closes and locks itself too, as do the other windows lining the house as she walks around the back. There's a shot where Cathy, apparently trapped inside, is shouting down to her mother from one window but there's no sound. Vivian tries to get back in through the front door, when the scene suddenly ends and then, George is back and has found Vivian lying on the ground by the door, babbling about what happened and that they need to help Cathy. Carrying her inside, he finds that Cathy was there all along, as she claims she was playing up in the attic. Ignoring what Vivian tries to tell him, George puts her to bed and, after talking with the doctor on the telephone, assures her that what happened was just a hallucination caused by the tranquilizers she's on. At 2:02 that morning, Vivian gets up and goes into the bathroom to splash her face with water, after which she walks out and into the nearby closet. She suddenly lets out a scream, awakening George, and she shows him that she has what looks like blood on her hands. He goes in the closet and finds a big, red splotch on the back of his coat's shoulder, which initially horrifies him about as much as it does Vivian. But, when he investigates the closet further, he finds that the shelf above the coats has a handful of bottles containing a red liquid that his father often used as a type of tonic; one of them had tipped over and dripped on the coat.

On another day, Cathy is playing around with some kids who are running around, flying a kite, ignoring George telling them they should go in a nearby pavilion where it's warm. However, Cathy stops on the shore of a lake and seems compelled to walk towards the water. The film starts cutting to a vision of Laura looking out a window, holding her doll, signifying that she's the one compelling Cathy to do this. Despite knowing how dangerous this is, Cathy can't help but walk down towards the water, as a montage of that picture of Laura, quick shots of the flaming car following the crash, and shots underwater are spliced in as well. Within seconds, she's in the icy water and drowning. One of the other kids runs to George and tells him what's going on. George rushes to the lake and jumps into the water, where Cathy is struggling to keep her head up. He grabs her and walks to shore with her in his arms, a series of images that's similar to the opening of Don't Look Now. That night, they return home, Vivian carrying Cathy into the house while George parks the car. Cathy suddenly scratches the side of Vivian's face and she tells George that she did it on purpose. George, who's exhausted and not in the mood, takes Cathy from Vivian's arms and walks into the house with her. Vivian follows, continuing to insist that Cathy scratched her on purpose, but George yells at her to drop it, telling her to look at how pitiful Cathy is over what's happened.

After an argument with George the next morning that ends with him storming out of the house, Vivian goes into the bathroom and begins running herself a bath, coming to the realization that her husband thinks she's crazy. Following that, she's shown sitting in the bathtub despondently, when the water coming out of the faucet turns to blood. Vivian yells at the sight of this and stands up while the tub fills up with the blood, now swiping madly at leeches that have suddenly appeared on her back. In the next scene, after the doctor has paid Vivian a visit, George tells Paul that he's likely going to be late in getting home again and Paul promises that he won't drink at all while looking after Cathy this time. That night, while they're both sitting at the table, Paul notices that Cathy keeps staring at him. When he goes to check on Vivian, Cathy doesn't want him to, telling him that she thinks he wants to go up because, "Old people like to see others die." Not knowing what to make of that, Paul goes on up and falls asleep in a chair in Vivian's bedroom. He's awakened by a phone call from George, who tells him that he won't be back until around 1:30. Telling him that his wife's sleeping, Paul hangs up and tends to the now awake Vivian, wiping the sweat from her forehead as she talks deliriously, telling someone not to touch her, asking what they've down with Cathy, and repeating some of what she's already said to Cathy. Paul goes to the bathroom, wets the rag some more, and then walks back into the bedroom, to hear Vivian yelling for someone to get out, clearly thinking Paul is this other person. Paul tells her that it's just him and goes back to wiping her face, as she goes on in her delirious chatter. Eventually, she asks Paul to save Cathy and he, taking her at her word, walks out of the room and heads to Cathy's.

Paul bangs against Cathy's bedroom door, unable to get it open (though it does come open at one point but Paul actually pulls it back and starts banging against it again), while Vivian attempts to get up but slumps back down. Cathy emerges from the bedroom but we only see her feet, as Paul backs away from her, walking down the stairs as she points her doll at him while moving towards him. He reaches the bottom of the stairs, only to be hit with a jagged ray of light that leaves a big wound in his torso. Up in her bedroom, Vivian now manages to get out of bed and, weakly pulling the curtains aside and looking out the window, sees Cathy forcing Paul out onto the grounds. She opens the window and you hear a bizarre yell that's obviously electronically distorted in places, and near the end, they play it in reverse! Vivian backs away to the bedroom door, when the phone rings again. At his job site, George grows concerned when he gets no answer and leaves to go see what's going on. Back at the house, Vivian walks outside and stumbles around to the back of the house, as a sound that comes off like a jackhammer plays on the soundtrack. She literally stumbles upon Paul's body lying on the ground and, when she turns him over on his back, you see that the flesh has stripped off his face. We get more of that distorted laughing (have they not figured out yet that that's not scary at all?), as all of the lights in the house suddenly come on by themselves. Vivian heads back inside and makes her way up to Cathy's bedroom, only to find her sitting on her bed, with burned scar tissue all over her face, clutching her doll. Shocked at this, Vivian calls to Cathy, only for her to respond, "My name is Laura." Cautiously, Vivian approaches her now fully-possessed daughter and rips the doll out of her hands. She tries to run off with it but Cathy lunges at her and grabs her from behind, struggling and trying to make her fall. She manages to grab her neck from behind and forces her to the floor, trying to bash her head against it at one point. The two of them struggle for control, Cathy ripping a big tear in the back of Vivian's nightgown as she tries to make it out the door.

George arrives home and rushes to the front door but, unable to find his key, yells for Paul to open it. Upstairs, Cathy bites into the side of Vivian's hand and George, hearing this, runs out in front of the house to try to look through the upper windows, before running around back, where he finds Paul's body. While Vivian keeps fighting with Cathy, George tries to get in through one of the two back doors. Vivian manages to slip away from Cathy, though she ends up rolling down the stairs because of it, before managing to get up and back into the next room. Seeing her through the door's window, George smashes through it in desperation, and when he steps in, he sees Cathy walk down to the bottom of the stairs. While he tries to process what he's seeing, Vivian rips out the doll's eyes, causing Cathy to cover her face with her hands, as the sound of demonic yelling fills the house and everything made of glass, from wine bottles and light coverings to flower vases and windows, suddenly shatter. An image of Laura slowly fades away, her spirit having been exorcised, both from the house and from Cathy, who is now back to normal (not that she was that memorable when she was herself, anyway), while the picture of Laura in the attic shatters. The movie ends with Cathy saying, "Mommy," confirming she's no longer possessed, the last shot being of the doll lying on the floor. You'd think the family would embrace, considering everything they've been through, but instead, the movie ends with them just looking at each other happily. Like I care that much, though.

The music score was by Didier Vasseur, another Frenchman who went on to also score Eddy Matalon's Blackout the following year and, unlike Matalon, worked pretty steadily up to his death in 2004. Like the music in A Candle for the Devil, the score here runs the gambit from sounding melancholy and atmospheric to bizarre and silly in some places. It's a mixture of traditional instruments and a lot of electronic stuff and, again, sometimes it works well in what it's trying to do, like a sad piano bit that you hear when Cathy first goes up into the attic, the ethereal music that you hear when Cathy catches Mary with her doll, a weird, high-pitched, shrieking piece for the scene where Cathy makes Paul stop moving, another otherworldly, electronic theme for when Cathy is compelled into the lake, and a harsh, threatening piece you here in the bathtub scene with Vivian, as well as a recurring, sing-song-like tune with some voices going, "Da, da, da." But, often, you hear music that makes you wonder what it is you're hearing. The scene where Agatha holds the picture of Christopher Gimble in her hands and channels the memories of what happened is made even sillier than it is with high-pitched, "bope, beep, beep, beeps," and low strumming during the flashback to the burning car that Laura was trapped in. An overly whimsical piano piece plays when Cathy is taking the tray of food up to her mother, and while the mood of it changes when the food decomposes, it's too late, in my opinion. A similarly whimsical-sounding electronic tune is heard when Cathy teleports around Vivian on the stairs and the struggle between Vivian and Cathy in the climax is set to melodramatic music that sounds like it was played against a silent movie. For better or worse, the score, as mixed as it is, is one of the movie's more memorable elements.

It may have a cult following but, to me, Cathy's Curse is a massive turd of a movie. Other than some fleeting bits of atmosphere, some effects that are just okay, and a music score that, though very mixed, does have effective themes, there's nothing I can compliment it for. The characters are underdeveloped and forgettable, the directing and editing are often very poor, the story is just a bunch of random episodes that ultimately add up to a bunch of chaos that doesn't make any sense in the long run, with the motivation behind the villain never being clear, there are effects that are astounding in how amateurish and cheap they are, and more often than not, its attempts at being scary come off as silly, boring, or just plain stupid, often compounded by how bizarre and silly the music can be. Its public domain status means it's very hard to avoid but, trust me, you'd be better off avoiding this thing like the plague for the rest of your life... like me.