Cathy's Curse (1977)

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This Canadian effort opens with a little girl being taken by her father to go find her mother and little brother, who have left the dad. There is no explanation why the mother took the son but not the daughter. Dad swerves to miss a little white bunny in the road, crashes the car, and he and the daughter die. Fast forward twenty years (and maybe until the end of this film- sorry, still love that joke), and little brother is all grown up and moving back into his childhood home with his wife and a daughter named Cathy (Randi Allen). An elderly cleaning lady and a handyman greet the family, introduce themselves as certain murder victims, and help the family move in. Cathy takes the dead daughter's old room, and finds the dead daughter's favorite toy in the attic. The toy, a doll with its eyes sewn shut, is an object of constant bickering between Cathy and her mother. The film makers make no bones about the fact that Cathy is haunted by her long dead child-aunt, but they can never seem to decide who is doing the haunting.

Is the gruesome doll possessed? No, the doll is not always present when weird things happen. Why does the doll have her eyes sewn shut? Never explained. If the dead child's possessions were so odious and offensive, why were they not thrown out twenty years earlier after the daughter died? That would make too much sense. Is the house haunted? Possibly, but by the dead daughter? There is no indication as to the daughter's possible evil. Maybe she is mad at the mind altering 1970's wallpaper treatments in her old home. Is Cathy just having a spell of ESP and a case of major whoopass? She is able to make some characters "see" things such as rats, snakes, and leaches, but this little devilish power is never explored, either. It seems like the ghost here is eternally pissed off at something, and takes her revenge on the unsuspecting, idiotic cast members. Cathy's father remains oblivious to his own surroundings, never mind the constant presence of police, EMTs, and veterinary coroners in his manicured front yard. He chalks it up to bad luck and constantly goes to the "building site," although we are never sure if he is an architect, construction foreman, or sandwich maker in the chuckwagon.

This is a spiteful, mean little film in which the writers and director have just as much contempt for the viewer as they do for their own characters. I honestly could not believe entire scenes as the actors spoke horrid lines and tried to make me believe they were a family. Watch for the omelette scene, where father and daughter exchange some of the most unbelievably stilted dialogue ever captured.

"Cathy's Curse" cannot be taken seriously, the only real curse is on the unsuspecting viewer. I highly don't recommend it.

Stats:
(1977) 82 min. (1/2 *) out of five stars
-Directed by Eddy Matalon
-Screenplay by Alain Sens-Cazenave & Eddy Matalon & Myra Clement
-Cast: Randi Allen, Alan Scarfe, Beverly Murray, Dorothy Davis, Mary Morter, Roy Witham, Bryce Allen, Sonny Forbes, Renee Girard, Linda Koot, Peter MacNeill, Lisa Nickelt, Hubert Noel
(R)