The Curse (1987) – What Happened to This Horror Movie?

Way back in March of 1927, famed writer HP Lovecraft wrote the science-fiction/horror short story The Colour Out of Space. In the story, a meteorite crashes in the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts. Fifty years later, the people who lived there suffered greatly. Their crops grow bountiful but rotten on the inside, their animals become mutated, and eventually, they themselves are driven to insanity and death. Not only was this Lovecraft’s favorite personal short story but would become one of his most well-regarded works. Sixty years later, in 1987, a film based on Lovecraft’s short story went into production under the title The Farm. What would follow was the financial failure of a movie with stories behind the scenes more grotesque than its monsters. Yet, it still somehow spawned three even more unheard-of and totally unconnected sequels. This is the story of What the F*ck Happened to The Curse?

This second on-screen iteration of HP Lovecraft’s short story would be adapted for the screen by A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge scribe David Chaskin. Actor David Keith was then brought on board to direct. You may recognize Keith from his acting in such films as An Officer and a Gentleman, the 2002 Carrie remake, or my personal favorite: as the asshole White Sox catcher Jack Parkman in Major League 2. He definitely has the face of one of those actors who you point to Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood-style and go “Hey, I know that guy from somewhere!” Though it was his first time behind the camera, Keith had the assistance of famed Italian horror film director Lucio Fulci on the set. Fulci’s place there, however, is a matter of contention. For starters, Fulci was credited as Lois Fulci. This is because they changed most of the Italian crew members names in the credit to make them sound more American. The first alarm bell of many that may pop up as we go through the story of the aptly titled The Curse…

Fulci was listed in the credits as a Producer and Special Effects Designer on the film. Which Producer Ovidio Assonitis disputes. He claims Fulci was merely there as a second unit director. Still yet, so many moments in The Curse resemble Fulci’s previous work that it has led some to wonder if Fulci did far more than just direct the second unit or handle the special effects. Perhaps in a Steven Spielberg/Tobe Hooper, “who really directed Poltergeist?” sort of way. In this case, we are unlikely to ever know. This film is not something many people involved in the production seem willing to discuss. For a multitude of reasons. 

The film would star Wil Wheaton in his first theatrical part since his performance in Stand by Me put the world on notice the year before. Wheaton played Zack, a teenage boy who was forced into a new family when his mother Alice (Kathleen Jordon Gregory) married Nathan (Claude Adkins). Nathan was… how to put this…. a complete and unfathomable asshole. He was a domineering farmer and father who used the word of his God as an excuse to physically and emotionally keep his kids and wife in line. When he’s not striking the children, he’s telling his wife that her biscuits are dry. That or, demeaning her for trying to get some adult time with him in the bedroom. But Nathan gets what he deserves. Both in his demise (in the form of a pitchfork through the gut) and in the fact that his wife ends up going outside in the middle of the night to bang an extremely creepy barn dude. Don’t ask me why this scene even exists because I won’t have an answer. But damn that guy was hairy. This completely pointless love making scene also happens to be the moment that a meteor arrives at the farm, putting into motion events that poison the water and turn everything to gooey death.

Wheaton’s real-life younger sister Amy Wheaton was cast as his innocent and loving little sister in the film; Opposite his new stepbrother: a mouth-breathing and obnoxious Cyrus. Think of Cyrus as the annoying Friday the 13th Part V chocolate bar guy, only as the entitled favorite child of your asshole step dad. The punchable character was played by Malcolm Danare, who Wheaton would later say was “kind and gentle” in real life, making him and his sister feel a little safer. Which, after the meteorite lands, our characters are anything but. 

Once the meteorite melts into the ground and infiltrates the water of this small Tennessee community, they chalk it up to… and I quote… airplane “dookie” that froze on its way down and then melted. There-forth anything that comes into contact with the water is infected. Plants become robust but diseased with worms and other exploding nastiness. The cows grow giant pulsating sacs of worms and other goo. Human beings start to grow boils on their faces and end up mutated, murderous monsters. But the hard-headed community is too wrapped up in either their own greed, religion, or simple hard-headedness to do anything about it before it’s too late.

The entire watching experience of The Curse is a strange one. While the story and setting are American-centric, the effects are Italian horror through and through. Disgusting and over the top in a way that even a simple chicken dinner will make you want to hurl. It’s all Fulci, all the time when it comes to the gross-out gags. These same special effects overlaid with the ultra-80s horror score are, to be honest, the only things that truthfully capture your attention in the film. Most of the characters are obnoxious and the movie focuses on some really pointless shit for much of its runtime. A storyline involving the refusal of Nathan to sell his farm and a plot to build a water dam that doesn’t amount to a pile of frozen airplane space dookie story-wise. But as far as nasty horror scenes go? It’s goo gone wild. Nothing in the film, however, is as gross as what allegedly went on behind the scenes according to a now-adult Wil Wheaton….

In a blog post, titled “When you watch The Curse, you are watching two children who were abused and exploited daily during production. No adults protected us”, Wheaton describes a set where both he and his sister were subjected to both physical and mental abuse. He says that he never wanted to do the film and that even as a kid he knew it would be bad for his career at the time. His parents, however, were tempted by the prospect of a hundred thousand dollars (of which he would only make fifteen cents on the dollar), a trip to Rome, and a role for his little sister. Wheaton recalls being beckoned to a meeting about the film with some producers without his agent. His mother instead acted on his behalf in a meeting where he was frightened and pressured by everyone present to sign on to the project. Once in Rome, he says his sister and he were subjected to a bevy of broken child labor laws and forced to work twelve hours a day without any breaks for five days a week. He says he was touched inappropriately twice by two different adults during production and had no faith his mother would do anything about it were she told. He called the director “coked out of his mind most of the time”, alleging he spent most of his time on set sleeping with or trying to sleep with one of the actresses. 

Things unfortunately keep getting darker from there. Wheaton says that the cuts on the face of his little sister as he consoles her in the film were not only real… but were put there by the production themselves. He says the makeup department “would literally cut my little sister’s face with a scalpel, in three places, and put bandages over them”. He also says in his blog that Fulci was the second unit director during the scene where his little sister’s character is attacked by the chickens. He claims that Fulci had live chickens thrown at his then nine-year-old sister, tying their legs to her so that they would peck her. And that their mother was on set and supportive of the scene. He also mentions having “buckets of talc, broken wood, bits of wallpaper and plaster” thrown into his face during the collapsing home scene. Shockingly, there’s not a lot out there in terms of a response to these horrid things Wheaton describes in the blog post. Wheaton says that to this day is unable to watch the film and understandably won’t sign any posters or promotional material from it at horror conventions. Which is what prompted him to finally write the blog post as he didn’t want to have to explain this every time someone brought merch from the film to him to sign. Again, understandably.

As a young Wil Wheaton had feared, the film was a total and utter box office flop grossing less than 2 million dollars domestically for distributor Trans World Entertainment. The film developed a small cult following on VHS and eventually DVD, where all three of its sequels would also land. I haven’t taken part in them myself and won’t but it is said that they have virtually nothing in common with the film. The fourth film, for instance, is a 1988 film titled Catacombs with nothing in common with the franchise that they simply renamed it Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice for its VHS release. Some high quality shit we have going on here, folks. Continuing the juxtaposition between the American and Italian horror themes, two different soundtracks were made for the film. An American and Italian version. Each with a ten minute score suite from Black Demons.

The reviews and critical responses to the movie itself are a bit hard to gauge. Some call it an entertaining gross-out film, while others refer to it as “increasingly unwatchable and flat-out incompetent” movie.

As far as the films effect on Wil Wheaton, he says, “Ultimately, as I predicted and feared, this piece of shit movie cashed me out of respectable films forever. I got offers for movies, but they were always mindless comedies or exploitative horror films. They were never the serious dramas I wanted to work in after Stand by Me”. Wheaton would go on to explain that the studios had compared him and River Phoenix to each other since Stand by Me released, wondering which of them was a more bankable star. He noted that they would see Phoenix doing respectable films with Harrison Ford and then see him “in this piece of shit”.

Wheaton would salvage his situation however and go on to play Wesley Crusher in the hit series Star Trek: The Next Generation among many other roles throughout his career.

For those of you who don’t want any part of this film knowing what has been alleged here but still want to see the story of Colour Out of Shape unfold on screen? HP Lovecraft’s work was previously adapted as Die, Monster, Die! starring Boris Karloff. Then again in 2019’s Color Out of Space, directed by The Island of Dr. Moreau’s Richard Stanley and starring the great Nicolas Cage. 

And that, my friends, is what happened to The Curse. 

A couple of the previous episodes of What Happened to This Horror Movie? can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!