Shudder's 'CURSED FILMS' Blu- ray Dives Deep Into 'THE EXORCIST, POLTERGEIST, THE CROW, And More!

Can the production of a film truly be cursed? I know of only one instance where a film has been literally cursed, and that was THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU but there’s no way that needed supernatural intervention to be a failure.

Admittedly, it might be odd for someone on a website solely dedicated to the weird and wonderful to immediately react to the notion of a ‘cursed’ film with skepticism, but lets face the scientifically supportable facts; we live in a random, godless universe of pain, suffering, silence and death. We apply supernatural and/or spiritual meaning to catastrophic events in an effort to rationalise and compartmentalise them and to prevent us from going utterly and absolutely insane. We live in a universe where ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is widely seen and applauded, yet BONE TOMAHAWK remains confined to the doldrums of ‘cult’ viewing, so don’t tell me there’s a divine entity in overall control of the events which unfurl before us like a battered and diseased cock falling portentously from the zipper of HARVEY WEINSTEIN’s pants.

That being said, the content of SHUDDER’s really rather splendid documentary series CURSED FILMS is some weird shit, yo.

The first series, which compromises of five episodes, concerns itself with the bizarre goings on behind the scenes of THE EXORCIST and THE OMEN, the curious deaths which occurred prior to the filming of POLTERGEIST, and finally the sequences of events which led to the tragic demise of BRANDON LEE on the set of THE CROW, and the helicopter apocalypse which claimed the lives of actor VIC MORROW and child actors RENEE CHEN and MY-CA DINH LE during the filming of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE.

This, the final episode, is perhaps the most sobering of the series, with the episode dedicated to the making of THE CROW feeling darkly en-vogue given recent events involving live rounds on a movie set.

Seasoned fans of the genre won’t find much by the way of “new” material here, but this is a neat n’ tidy collection of musings, recollections and insights into some truly troubled productions which newcomers to horror will likely find informative and eye-opening.

CURSED FILMS is available to buy from Monday.

Thanks to Shudder for sending us over the Blu-ray for review.