Curtains

Six beautiful girls, trying to get ahead… when the curtains fall, five will be dead.

Robert Guza Jr. (Prom Night) wrote the screenplay for this 1983 Canadian slasher film that was directed by  Richard Ciupka who also worked on 1980's Academy Award nominated Atlantic City.  The film (mostly) takes place at the remote estate of a movie director (John Vernon Animal House, Dirty Harry) who he invites several actresses to.  While there the group of women will be auditioning for a role in his new picture.  Samantha Eggar, Deborah Burgess, Lynne Griffin, Linda Thorson, Anne Ditchburn, Sandee Currie, Lesleh Donaldson play the actresses trying to win the part, some of them through any means necessary. 

When this one was in the process of being conceived it was made to target an older audience as opposed to the normal slasher films which the developers felt were geared more towards teens and twenty-somethings.  The film took three years to make due to creative differences between the director and the producer Peter Simpson.  Eventually Ciupka would walk away from the production and he had his name pulled from the film however a great deal of the scenes he directed are in the final product.  The film was released to little fan fare and it received mostly negative reviews although it has since gained a cult following and has since received some better reviews. The film was released for the first time on DVD and Blue Ray just three years ago in 2014 and I have to tell you the blue ray version is absolutely gorgeous!

This isn't your typical slasher, which they were going for so success there for sure which ended up giving the film a fresh take on the genre.  Unfortunately some of the characters just are not interesting enough to keep the film going at a decent pace.  Eggar and Vernon are definitely the stars of the film and they do their best trying to place the movies fully on their shoulders and carrying it but that ends up being a task too big for them to pull off.  Much of the blame for this is probably due to the slow production process, I can't imagine having to keep going back into character time and time again doing the film on the installment plan. It does have the (in)famous ice skating scene which is the iconic scene of the film so there is that and I can fully recommend the film just for that for at least one viewing if you have never watched it before.  The Horror Honey and I both give this one 3 Sickles of Death out of 5.