Cursed Films Season 2
Carlos Beirise
From the controversy surrounding The Exorcist, a series of unfortunate events that plagued the cast and crew during the making of The Omen, a series of untimely deaths connected to the making of the Poltergeist films, the death of Brandon Lee due to an on-set accident during the making of The Crow, to a horrific on-set accident during the production of Twilight Zone: The Movie, these are all probably things you have made a swift internet search on after viewing the films.
It is this concept that Cursed Films explores, investigating what exactly occurred on these famously cursed sets and examining how they could be explained, but also discussing the effect of living in a world where evidence remains permanent.
Every episode sees Cheel speak with as many cast and crew members as he can, as well as general fans and critics of the film and people who have interests in things like curses and the supernatural. The first three episodes have a balance of conversations with sceptics of curses and the paranormal to show how the events could all just be coincidences, but also with dark magicians and witches who explain how a curse could have worked. In the final episode, the consequences speak for themselves and, of course, I still think that Landis has some responsibility for what happened. But the episode also interviews a stuntman who explains that accidents can easily happen and that you cannot fully be in control of stunts. It really does offer up some thought-provoking approaches.
At only 30 minutes each, the short run-times makes for a quick and easy viewing, but each episode still manages to be filled with so much information, exploring its subject film at great length. I thoroughly recommend giving this series a watch, and hope to see more episodes in the future.
Showrunner Jay Cheel was supposed to premiere his five-part documentary series Cursed Films (reviewed on this site) at the 2020 SXSW Film Festival, but COVID-19 got in the way. So instead of interviewing him there, I had to chat with him on the phone, instead, the two of us holed up in our respective isolation spots. A vibrant fellow, he makes a fine conversationalist, taking me through his process with great detail. Premiering today on Shudder, the series explores the ins and outs of the ostensibly cursed productions of, in order, The Exorcist, Poltergeist, The Omen, The Crow and Twilight Zone: The Movie. I have only seen the first three episodes; at the time of the interview, I had only seen episodes 2 and 3. Here is a condensed digest of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
CLR: Sure. So in your episode on The Omen, you bring in some quite outlandish characters, at least from my perspective, among them a witch and a black magician, which takes you a little bit away from the actual movie. How did you find them and decide to include them in the series?
JC: Well, some of them, like Michael Shermer, I was aware of before going into the series. I had heard him on a number of podcasts, and so he was someone that from the very beginning I was hoping to be able to reach out to and get involved in the show, and he was kind enough to take part. And everyone else, it was just through general research, reading their books, and just reading articles online about horror films and religion, and how horror films encourage supernatural thinking even amongst the most skeptical of thinkers. I had done a project previous to this one, a short documentary called Twisted, which dips into this sort of urban-legend storytelling about a drive-in theater local to me that screened the movie Twister when it came out. The story is that a tornado actually hit the drive-in and tore the screen down while the movie Twister was playing. And even further to that, it was during the scene in Twister when a drive-in theater was hit by a twister.
Filmmaker Jay Cheel is no stranger to uncovering the truth. Having directed the 2016 documentary How to Build a Time Machine, which followed two men on a quest to build their own time machine, he is now on a journey to bring about the truth surrounding certain horror films and the supposed curses that befell them in the upcoming Shudder original series, CURSED FILMS.
Jay Cheel: Shudder approached me with the general concept of doing a documentary series on cursed films and asked what my approach might be. As a horror fan, I had heard of these stories before, but I thought that there might be an interesting angle beyond the internet listicle take on this subject matter. I was excited by the idea of using these cursed legends as the opportunity to explore why we are so fascinated by these stories and how horror films prime us for belief in the supernatural and unexplained.
In 1996, the small town of Thorold, Ontario, made national headlines. Residents were stunned to see a tornado touch ground at the local drive-in movie theatre during a screening of Jan de Bont's Twister. It was a one-in-a-million convergence of events and a ready-made media narrative picked up by news stations around the world.
Fascinated by the myth, filmmaker Jay Cheel wrote and directed "Twisted," a 15-minute short film that first explored (and then gently debunked) the events that took place that night. In hindsight, "Twisted" also established the framework that Cheel would bring to Cursed Films, his new series for streaming horror site Shudder: an appreciation for the cinematic myths that shape our connection to iconic horror movies, and a desire to explain how these tall tales arose in the first place. "[Cursed Films] takes it beyond the internet listicle approach and digs deeper into the stories," he explained.
Cheel had planned to screen the first two episodes at SXSW, and each deals with an iconic horror movie with an equally iconic urban myth attached. The first explores the supposed curses of the human skeletons in Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist, while the second recounts and debunks the supernatural events surrounding the shoot of Richard Donner's The Omen. It becomes a means to exploring the pervasive presence of curses in history and popular culture (even inviting a black magician to demonstrate a ritual of his own). In each case, a dedicated following of horror fans have entrenched the idea that these "curses" led to tragedies for the cast and crew who worked on the film. Just as Cheel did in "Twisted," he takes an inside-outside approach: Each episode begins by establishing that film's unique mythology before exploring the circumstances and events that may have allowed those myths to propagate. He explained, "It lets us meet some of the people involved with these curse legends and see how they've actually been affected by them."
In their research, Cheel and his team cast a wide net, sitting down with filmmakers involved with the production, horror journalists well-versed in the film's cultural footprint, historians, professors of religious studies, professional skeptics, and even the occasional witch to discuss the power of myth. Cheel explained, "What makes the series a good watch is how each episode deals with each cursed story in very different ways, and opens up conversations that are specific to those films and those legends."
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