TOMASBBloodhound Every now and again, Canada produced a competent horror film back in they day. Though not quite as memorable as Black Christmas or My Bloody Valentine, Curtains offers some good acting, atmosphere, and a few chilling scenes. The plot centers around a sleazy veteran director who invites six young actresses to his secluded property in order to audition them for a big part in an upcoming project. Its also clear from early on that these women mostly feel obligated to audition in the bedroom, as well. But before all of this is to happen, the director has his usual lead actress committed to an insane asylum, presumably to research the part, but more likely to get her out of the way in order to use the other actresses. She is able to get out just in time to participate in the auditions. And the moment these women show up, someone wearing a hideous mask begins killing them. Who is doing the killing? Stick with it to the conclusion to find out.The film scores early points for depicting the depressing and frightening world inside an insane asylum. You can see the toll it would take on someone, even if they weren't initially insane. The atmosphere shifts to that of isolation once the actresses find themselves snowed in with the domineering director. Early victims of the murdered are thought to have just left because they couldn't take the pressure. "Even with the roads impassible?" someone asks. This is simply dismissed, but it seemed like a good question. One flaw the film makes is not letting us get to know these women any deeper than one or maybe two traits. Most are just there to be slaughtered. The killer is pretty creepy. I hadn't seen this in at least 25 years up until this morning, but I always remembered the "skating scene". Genuinely frightening. Also any scene with the creepy doll. The acting is quite good. Especially from John Vernon and Lynne Griffin. He is pompous and sleazy, but not over the top. His character seems to know how to elicit a good performance, one way or the other. This isn't the first memorable Canadian film for Griffin. I remember her as the first victim in Black Christmas. Wasn't she in Strange Brew, too? As far as guessing who the killer is... the longer you watch, the more obvious it is. Clearly it is one of the women, but as more of them die, you lose potential suspects. And of course the most logical person could not be the actual killer. I think the ending on youtube is different than I remember it from back in the 80s. I thought it had Patti performing her stand-up routine in front of all the dead victims. But here she was giving it to the zombie-like patients of an asylum. Either this is a different version, or I didn't remember it correctly. Either ending works. 7 of 10 stars.The Hound.

TheRedDeath30 There is a trend among fans of genre films to look at some long forgotten film as a "lost treasure". Those of us in the horror community are often so hungry for more horror, that we plumb the depths of the past, digging up forgotten films from the golden ages of horror and hailing them as lost gems, when the reality can often be that the movie was nothing more than average at the time and nothing more than average now. That is clearly the case with CURTAINS, a movie that so many of my horror brethren painted in such beautiful light, but really doesn't hold up to the ratings.The Dean from ANIMAL HOUSE plays an "auteur", the kind of director that was so popular in Hollywood around the time of this film's making. When we meet him at the beginning of the film, he is developing a movie with his muse, an actress that is destined to play the role and so bent on perfecting it that she gets herself committed to the asylum for research (this is method acting, right?). Only her plans don't go so well. The director conveniently forgets about her and sets up a casting call at his mansion, where he invites 6 women to come audition for the role. From there, we get pretty much yet another twist on TEN LITTLE INDIANS (if you don't know the reference, go look it up. Half the thrillers you have ever seen in your life were stolen from this plot line). Actresses start dying one by one and the movie is a mystery to guess whodunit.I think that the one thing that this movie does have going for it is its' influences. While very much an 80s slasher film, it is much more highly influenced by the giallo genre, than by the American teen killer films. As such, we mostly avoid gratuitous nudity and the sort of creative kills that were so popular in the wake of Friday THE 13th. Instead, we get a lot of the hallmarks of the giallo, some technique with lighting and color, the use of adult cast, rather than generic teenage stereotypes, a doll that exists for no real plot reason and a killer with a creepy mask and a trademark weapon. We're really just missing the black gloves and a plot that makes no sense.They may have been better off with killing kids in this movie, than the six "beautiful women". None of these girls are given any real personality, nor developed in any way. Being that they are auditioning for the same role, they even all fit into a particular look, so it can be difficult for the viewer to even tell the difference between these women at times. In that way, it starts to become obvious who the killer is in this movie because she's the only one that the movie has taken any time to develop into a real character, with a real personality.The killer is kind of cool, with an old hag's mask and a thresher in hand, the killer starts dispatching the women, most of whom are taking up a little too much of the director's attention. The film tries to play a red herring and throws the viewer a little bit of a twist, but there is really nothing clever in the writing and the movie lacks any signature "kill scene" that fans of the slasher genre are usually looking for in these movies.This isn't a bad film in any way. It's not a good film in any way. In the history of horror, from the silent era to the indie films that appear on streaming sites today, there have always been plenty of movies that were just sort of there. Average films that tried to hit on the successful formula of others and that's about all that CURTAINS aspires to be.

Predrag Well how far would you go to become famous? Apparently, in this film it means murder. Samantha Sherwood has worked with the well-known director Jonathan Stryker on all his major films. She naturally assumes she has been given the title role in his latest venture, "Audra". He tells her that she needs to do some background research on the part, so arranges to have her committed to an asylum (as Audra is a former psychiatric patient). She goes along with this, not realizing that he intends to leave her there indefinitely and audition six young women of various professions for the part instead. She finally manages to escape, and returns to the spooky old mansion where the auditions are taking place. But who is causing the disappearances of the young hopefuls?? The cinematography of this film is spectacular, the setting is somewhere I'd hate to be alone, and the atmosphere is quite chilling, which sets the stage for an outstandingly creepy witch-masked killer to get down to business with a good selection of weapons. John Vernon and Samantha Eggar are great as director and star of an upcoming movie. "Curtains" is a whopper of a slasher film that does nearly everything right. Creepy costume? Check. Intriguing backstory? Check. Likable, if slightly over-the-top, characters? Check. Great death scenes? Double check. I know this movie went though hell in post production. Rumor has it that the film was shelved for a year, during which there were re-writes, re-shoots, and one major re-casting done. Eventually numerous crew members had to be re-hired to shoot the footage to complete the film.Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

Joe First of all, I love cheesy 80's slasher movies. They're probably my favorite when it comes to horror films. This movie was so boring, I barely made it to the end. The characters aren't likable. The writing was poor and it got to point where I didn't even know what the heck was going on. The plot was just kind of dumb unless you want to watch a movie about some bickering actresses who only care about winning the part of an audition.Anyways, the best part about this flick is the killer that wears a creepy hag mask. Seeing pictures of that was intriguing. Unfortunately, those scenes are too fast and too few. I just didn't like this movie overall.