Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 1: Curtains (1983)

I'm an avid Letterboxd user, and I have a very, very long Watchlist (at this writing, it's almost 600 movies). The thing is, I don't always remember just why I've added a movie to it. Sometimes, it's because a friend recommends it. Sometimes, it's just to remember an upcoming release that sounds interesting. Sometimes, it's because a random review from a user I follow pops up in my feed. I wish there was an easy little note feature that would pop up whenever you add a movie to your Watchlist, like a Post-it where you can note something like "adding this because I saw a clip on Instagram and it looks crazy" or "so and so said this scared the shit out of them." (Hey Letterboxd, that's a free enhancement idea right there. You're welcome!)

This is a long way of saying that for a lot of the movies I'll be talking about in this countdown, it remains a bit of a mystery just where I heard about them, and that's certainly true of the 1983 Canadian slasher flick Curtains.

As is the case with many a slasher flick, it's low-points outnumber its high-points. But the high-points are pretty great. For one thing, it stars Samantha Eggar as an aging actress who decides to get method and checks herself into a mental hospital in preperation for a movie role. The director of that movie is played by the master thespian of asshole roles, John Vernon. He decides to leave her in that hospital and cast the movie with an ingenue instead, and sets up an entire weekend of casting in a snowy getaway. But no mental hospital can keep a true diva down! And that house full of ingenues soon gets picked off one by one... 

Because this is a slasher movie, we get a requisite killer in a mask, and some gratuitous nudity. But we also get an inexplicable creepy doll, and a random appearance by Michael Wincott.  And all of this leads up to an ending that does not make a lot of sense, preceded by some pacing that's seriously all over the place. But some moments, like the one in the gif above, make it all worth it.

 I watched Curtains on Shudder. It's also available to stream on Prime Video and Hoopla.