Cursed (2005) Review

Tagline: “What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.”

Cursed (2005) Review

 

We’ve all heard about the werewolves of London, but are you familiar with the werewolves of Hollywood? The filmmaking team who brought us Ghostface in Scream reunited for their take on the werewolf subgenre: director Wes Craven, screenwriter Kevin Williamson, and even composer Marco Beltrami. It feels like Cursed was basically intended to do the same thing for werewolves that Scream did for slasher movies, bringing meta jokes and references and deconstructions of the cliches while also embracing them and becoming something fresh, new, and entertaining. Unfortunately, unlike Scream, the end result was not what anyone was hoping for, especially the filmmakers.

The opening credits for the makeup effects and cast are also reasons to take note. Rick Baker, Academy Award-winning makeup artist who did An American Werewolf in London, gets sole effects credit, and I can’t list all of the standout actors, but a few include Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg as siblings Ellie and Jimmy, Milo Ventimiglia as Jimmy’s high school bully, Bo, and Nick Offerman in an early bit part as a police officer. Portia de Rossi plays a small role as a fortune teller, which is a blatant reference to the gypsy from The Wolf Man, but many of the meta references are like sledgehammers for horror fans, because Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolf Man is literally in this movie (as a wax statue, mind you, in a horror-themed display) and while that blatancy could be blamed on writer Kevin Williamson, his original script was completely overhauled throughout filming, so I don’t even know which, if any, of the ideas that made it to screen were his to begin with.

After a car crash and an attack by an unseen creature, Ellie and Jimmy begin to have strange feelings and experiences. Ellie is the skeptic, but Jimmy lays right into believing they have been turned into werewolves, and pointedly says they are “cursed” way too many times (Get it? That’s the title!). Who turned them into werewolves in the first place, though? It toys with some interesting ideas, but most of them had already been explored in far more effective ways in earlier films like The Howling and Ginger Snaps. Neither of them outright turns into a werewolf, but their dog, Zipper, does at one point later on, and he looks like Scooby Doo—as in the bad CGI version from 2002. Jimmy does undergo a change, though, from a nerd to an edgy, spiky-haired sexual magnet, and I refuse to believe Sam Raimi didn’t see this and take inspiration for emo Peter Parker in Spider-Man 3, because Eisenberg was channeling some of that same energy before Tobey Maguire ever did.  

I can imagine Cursed may have been a guilty youthful pleasure of mine in an alternate universe where I saw it in the late 2000s as the target demographic, but that’s not the reality of this review. When the movie first came out it was ripped to shreds by critics, and despite every effort from the producers, it was immediately obvious to audiences that something had gone wrong behind the scenes. For as many missteps as Cursed makes, it’s still mostly a goofy good time, but even on those terms, it has problems. The two main aspects I enjoyed the most were the cast and the werewolf moments. In addition to the actors I already mentioned, I like Joshua Jackson, and know him best from the TV series Fringe, but here he’s a bit sleepy as Ellie’s boyfriend, and it’s immediately obvious that he’s the werewolf, even though there’s some effort to make it a mystery. There’s another more surprising reveal later of another secret werewolf, though—so many werewolves! Despite their abundance, we don’t get to see them too often.

Rick Baker’s name was retained for the opening credits despite the werewolf design and effects that appear in the theatrical cut not being his work. KNB EFX group were brought in during reshoots to take care of the effects after Baker left, and I think the creature still looks decent, but most of the shots are quickly edited, and many of their effects were replaced with poor CGI. There’s a suitably entertaining sequence pretty early on of a werewolf hunting its prey in a parkade, where we finally get a good look at the lupine predator, but the death scene is cut short, which is disappointing. This is another unfortunate case of a film being shot with an R-rating in mind but getting cut down to PG-13. An “uncensored” version was released on DVD, but it didn’t reinstate much of the trimmed gore and violence. I watched it on streaming and I’m honestly not even sure which version it was, and don’t really care.

The setup for Cursed is decent, and most of the werewolf action is saved for the last half hour, but the rest of the time in between drags a bit, with few standout moments and some annoying character interactions. The early 2000s homophobic humour gets pedalled so hard it becomes so-bad-it’s-funny, and while there are a few clever twists on werewolf tropes, it doesn’t manage to elicit many laughs or scares in that middle stretch, whether it’s trying to be funny or scary. This movie is classified as a horror comedy, but it’s not really either. There are still many fun moments throughout, including the most well-known shot of a werewolf smashing through a window and flipping the bird to the main characters, which was supposedly improvised. It could also be viewed as the werewolf giving the finger to the audience for watching such a dumb movie, or better yet, fingering the crew behind the camera for the hell of a production they were all put through.

While the hope was to produce something as great as Scream (even the poster evokes the same vibe), Cursed is not ranked very high in Wes Craven’s filmography. I consider myself a Craven fan, and have seen most of his movies, but also recognize that the quality of his work was never really consistent throughout his career, but in the particular case of this film, I don’t think it was his fault. Imagine making basically a whole movie, and then being told to go back and film it all over again but with significant changes, and then having it taken away from you in the post-production phase and hacked up into something barely recognizable from what you originally shot. It’s no wonder Craven never spoke highly of the version that eventually made it into theatres a full two-and-a-half years after he started working on the project, which he admitted he took on because his pay was doubled after he first turned it down.

The behind-the-scenes story about Cursed is just as interesting as the actual film, if not even a little more so. I won’t divulge all the details, but what it came down to was the real predator on set, Harvey Weinstein, screwing up what could have been a much better film. I’m surprised Craven made Scream 4 for the Weinsteins after his terrible experience on Cursed. There have been calls for the release of the “Craven cut”, reinstating everything that was scrapped, and while I would love to see it, I’m skeptical it will ever be released.

Cursed lives up to its name only in terms of its actual production. The actual movie will work for some—maybe if you like the Scream sequels you will get more out of it—but it certainly wasn’t the redefining werewolf film it could have been. Still, it’s worth checking out for its trashy 2000s qualities and its little glimmers of greatness. 

Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf (1988) Review

Tagline: “The New Scooby-Doo Movie You'll Howl For!”

Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf (1988) Review

 

The Scooby-Doo franchise has featured pretty much every type of monster imaginable since it first started as a Saturday morning cartoon in 1969, but in the 1980s, Hanna-Barbera started producing televised feature-length films, and one of the earliest examples had the biggest cast of classic monsters ever seen in animated form. I saw Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf as a re-run on Teletoon when I was a kid, and as a Scooby fan who was somewhere between casual and consistent, it stuck with me as one of the best animated movies featuring the character, but how does it hold up today?

Unlike later TV movies of the Great Dane’s namesake, this one stars just Scooby and Shaggy as the main characters, without any of the other Mystery Inc. gang members. It starts with Shaggy as a pro race car driver, winning a race with a range of tricks in his decked-out dragster. Count Dracula just so happens to be hosting an upcoming “Monster Road Rally” for some of the most famous horror personalities, including the Frankenstein Monster and his bride, the Mummy, and even a swamp monster. The Wolf Man has retired, though, but it also just so happens that the next man prophesized to become a werewolf is none other than Shaggy—crazy coincide, right? Dracula forces Shaggy to compete and makes him a deal: if he can win the race, he can become human again, but if he loses, he has to remain a werewolf forever. Winning won’t be easy, though, because Dracula has totally rigged the race to be against him, and the other competitors have some monstrous surprises of their own!

Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf doesn’t do a whole lot with the concept of Shaggy as a werewolf, and is more focused on the racing aspect of the story, but that isn’t a bad thing. The first half hour is a bit slow and focuses way too much on two very annoying characters: the Hunch Bunch. Brunch and Crunch are Drac’s hunchbacked henchmen; one of them has a pompous British accent and a monocle and is the “smarter” one of the pair, and the other has his tongue constantly hanging out and can’t speak properly. Luckily, their roles are diminished as the movie goes on. Shaggy is at the drive-in hanging out with his girlfriend Googie, as well as Scooby and Scrappy-Doo, when Shaggy undergoes his transformation, and all of them are transported to Transylvania in the bat-copter (maybe Drac leased it from Batman?). Googie only ever appeared in this one movie, and there’s not much to say about her. Scrappy had plenty of representation in movies and shows in the 80's, but this would actually be his last role until the live-action Scooby-Doo movie in 2002, though he plays a pretty small part here.

Googie and Scrappy are basically a mobile pit crew for Shaggy and Scooby once the race starts, and the race is what I remembered best about this movie, because it makes up more than half the runtime. I’d completely forgotten about Brunch and Crunch, as well as the whole Shaggy-becoming-a-werewolf setup in that first half hour. Once it gets to the race, though, Reluctant Werewolf gets much more consistently funny and entertaining. There are Transylvanian peasants standing by watching the race and listening to the commentators, frequently providing apathetic “yays” or “boos” which never gets old. Dracula commentates along with his wife, Vanna Pira, who has a major crush on Shaggy for some reason and makes quite a few annoying jokes, such as when she says she’s going to provide “colour commentary” and then just starts listing all the colours she can see.

If you have a problem with puns made about monsters, I don’t think you’ll be able to handle this movie at its best. I mean, even a character named Shaggy becoming a werewolf, the hairiest of all monsters (next to Cousin Itt) is in itself a joke. What I appreciate is the rapidity and variety of jokes throughout the race. I couldn’t possibly list them all; a few of the visual gags I find particularly amusing include the mummy’s car using bandages like rope to ensnare a competitor’s car, Frankenstein’s Monster’s car using a lightning cannon shaped like a giant bolt, and swamp thing’s car shooting disgusting bog muck at the witch sisters. Many of the monsters’ names/identities are also joke versions. For example, I like that instead of a generic animated skeleton he’s called Mr. Bone Jangles and talks like he’s a cool old rack of bones. Every monster gets at least one moment to shine. 

Though he’s not a participant in the race, Dracula gets the most screentime of any monster and is often unintentionally sabotaged by the Hunch Bunch. He pronounces Shaggy's name “Shaw-Gi” and is probably one of the funniest versions of Dracula I can think of despite still being an antagonist. It often cuts away to the Count’s attempts at thwarting Shaggy and Scooby, and I found these bits inconsistently funny. Some are in the spirit of good-old-fashioned cartoon hijinks, but others are kind of lame. These bits do prevent the race from feeling repetitive or monotonous, though, and while there are many overhead shots of the cars, the sequences throughout the race are never boring or tiresome. One thing that bugged me was how every monster had a unique vehicle design that complimented their most obvious attributes except for the Wolf Man. Shaggy’s car is just a decked-out VW bug, but nothing about it makes me think werewolf. A quick note on Shaggy’s outfit: he’s wearing his red t-shirt instead of the traditional green one, and from what I remember, every time Shaggy wore his red shirt, it was a good movie.

Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf is still fun to watch all these years later and stands out as a much more original werewolf movie than you might expect, even if not specifically because Shaggy himself is a werewolf. It’s like watching a cartoon version of Mario Kart with classic monsters instead of Nintendo characters (now that would be a game I'd love to play), mixed with some of the usual Scooby-Doo antics in a premise that’s different from the standard mystery solving. It’s one of the best old school Scooby-Doo movies, though perhaps not as great overall as some others that came later. Between reviewing Scooby-Doo! and the Loch Ness Monster a couple years ago, rewatching Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island last Halloween for the first time since I was a kid, and now revisiting this one, I’m thinking I may need to rewatch some more Scooby-Doo movies from my childhood, to see which others still remain entertaining all these years later. 

Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory (1961) Review

Tagline: “Beauties! The prey of a monster's desires!”

Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory (1961) Review

 

The title of this movie is perhaps questionable, but certainly not generic. You might expect Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory to be a schlocky, non-serious horror romp of a wolfman preying on hysterical, screaming young women, but it’s actually a surprisingly serious murder mystery, and a clear marker for the slowly evolving lycanthropy subgenre in that era. Unfortunately, the peak of its greatness begins and ends with that title.

The film began as Lycanthropus, and was produced in Italy, with other alternate titles including I Married a Werewolf, Monster Among the Girls, and The Ghoul in School. Speaking of that last title, the American version starts with an abrupt title card accompanied by a song called “The Ghoul in School” which is also included in brackets under the Dormitory title with an exclamation mark. It’s an upbeat song that doesn’t fit the tone of the film at all. A new teacher shows up to a girls’ reformatory just as mysterious murders begin to take place. Women are lured out into the woods and killed, so a more accurate title would have actually been Werewolf in the Woods Outside a Girls’ Reformatory, but I guess that just didn’t have the same ring to it. The reveal of the werewolf’s identity isn’t too shocking, but the mystery is sustained for most of the runtime. 

Apparently, there were actors and crewmembers speaking French, English, Italian, and German on set, which made the production very chaotic, but I’m actually surprised the movie didn’t turn out to be a complete mess. It’s mainly just a dull affair. The whole thing was dubbed into English, and the dubbing is horrendous. The line delivery sounds flat, and unfortunately, the majority of scenes are full of dialogue. The female cast members are attractive (they don’t exactly look like they need “reforming” though), but the characters are not noteworthy, so there’s little impact when any of them are murdered. The only kill that’s really upsetting is when the werewolf, in human form, beats a German shepherd to death off camera.

Most of the horror doesn’t extend beyond a lot of wolf howls and murky cinematography. The dramatic piano and strings on the soundtrack do a lot of the heavy lifting to make the horror scenes scarier, but it becomes a fruitless effort before long. The werewolf looks about right for the era—not the worst, but not the best, though lacks much hair and is shown very little in the first hour. I suppose he could’ve been passed off as simply a “ghoul” were it not for cutting several times to the full moon. This was still in an era when horror films were heavily censored, so we don’t see a lot of the kills, though we do see one girl early on with bloody slashes on her face and neck. It’s an interesting crossroads between gothic horror and the Italian giallo films to come, with the setting and suspicious teachers reminding me of something like Suspiria.

Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory is pretty dated and now more of a curiosity in the history of werewolf films, reserved for only the biggest lycanthrope fans to check out. Compared to the earlier 1956 film The Werewolf (which this movie outclasses solely on the grounds of its superior title), it’s even slower, and compared to Hammer's The Curse of the Werewolf released only one year earlier, it feels antiquated and tame, because Hammer's film was in colour with a period setting, though neither are as mystery-driven as Dormitory in their plots. Perhaps a remaster of the uncut Italian version would warrant a second viewing, but for me, the American version is only worth putting on in the background of a Halloween party.