The Curse - Intro

Although many might laugh, I have always been rather fascinated with The Curse / The Farm (1987), from the fact that actor David Keith (Firestarter (1984) and everything television, spanning multiple genres)) was the director (and shot footage in his home state of Tennessee) to its rather promising cast which included Wil Wheaton (who denounced the film, regretting being in it), John Schneider (who has been continually working much like Keith over television and genres since his Dukes of Hazzard days), and television veteran Claude Akins (I have an affinity for Akins because of my deep love for The Twilight Zone and he’s in my favorite episode from that show, The Monsters are Due on Maple Street). But the movie makes Akins so particularly loathsome and Wheaton so wimpy and such a victim The Curse can be such a difficult watch. This is the kind of film that has Malcolm Danare (Moochie in Christine (1983)) shoving Wheaton in manure on a cart, laughing and mocking him about it, and when a rightfully pissed Wheaton responds by trying to fight back, Danare (being of bigger size and strength than the skinny Wheaton) grabs his wrists and makes him Say Uncle…it is the kind of thing those bullied in the past will relate to and cringe at. It is the kind of film that has farmer Akins arriving just as Wheaton strikes Danare across the back of the neck wanting to know what is going on between them, subsequently striking Wheaton when he blasphemes upon Danare’s lie of his “slipping” into the manure. Akins freely will punch Wheaton and in another breath quote scripture to him, even as Danare is clearly the culprit in how Wheaton reacts strongly to his bullying, prickish nonsense. When Wheaton’s mother, trying to be the homemaker wife pleasing to the new husband, gazes lustfully at the hired hand (working on a well on the farm), Akins gruffly complains about the “biscuits being too dry”.

Danare bullying Wheaton

Akins quoting Romans to these boys about being brothers

Charlie talking to Francis about selling the farm

Mama's eyes gaze towards another.

Just a year ago I was in Stand by Me

Daddy is a no-go on any hanky-panky

Akins is presented as a strict zealot, often telling his wife (who he pays little attention to besides expecting her to see to his needs, in regards to cooking and cleaning and not “babying her kids”, those step children he took in with her) to button up her shirt so the kids “won’t see”, ignoring her and failing to realize that her appetites are starting to wander elsewhere (preferably towards that hand stuck trying to unplug the well). Meanwhile Wheaton stares out his bedroom window wondering how the hell he wound up in the house of this growly misanthrope.

 

I guess for me personally, the whole subplot involving Akins’ wife and the hand on the farm was rather an odd creative indulgence that sort of begs the question: what possessed Francis to marry the bible-thumping (and much older) Nathan to begin with? He was clearly a sexual buzzkill and reduced her to a shoprag, only available to him when he needed her for reasons that benefited him. That she would consciously and voluntarily walk over to the hand’s shelter and eventually allow herself to be seduced by him should come as no surprise!

When the meteorite eventually is revealed to us (the “colour from space”, in homage to Lovecraft), it looks like a glowing ball of string. It seemed like something out of It Came from Outer Space (1953) from the great Jack Arnold, starring Carlson (Creature from the Black Lagoon) and Barbara Rush. I love …from Outer Space (and watch it almost anytime Turner Classics shows it) but by ’87 the meteorite could be a bit more of its time…maybe that was the intention by Keith to be a throwback and purposely make the rock from outer space similar to something from the 50s.

 

When the meteorite is “grounded”, it looks like a giant inflatable ball. Again, with a “landing trail” where it “skid” before coming to rest, this is right out of 50s sci-fi. Now the 80s did a lot of that: paying homage to sci-fi of the past. Often much better than this, though.