In theatre, it’s considered bad luck to say the name of the play MacBeth. I also think it’s bad luck to use certain words or phrases in a movie or TV show. Rumor has it that the filmmakers behind In the Line of Fire tried to turn “That’s not gonna happen” spoken by Clint Eastwood’s character into a catchphrase until they realized it could backfire if the movie failed at the box office or with critics. Take Michael Jackson’s Dangerous tour which had to be canceled early due to his health problems and rehabilitation. This was followed by the first reports of child sexual abuse allegations.
Even the notoriously bad movie An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn ended up having a production that was mirrored in the movies production with Arthur Hiller becoming upset when the studio recut it and he ended up using the pseudonym Alan Smithee. Ironically, Joe Ezsterhas, who wrote the movie had originally titled it Turmoil. Somethings just aren’t meant to be.
A movie like Cursed seemed like a good idea on paper. Wes Craven would be reuniting with Kevin Williamson to tackle the werewolf subgenre of horror. However, despite some misinformation, this wasn’t originally titled Bad Moon Rising, which was a different movie Craven had been attached to in the late 1990s that never happened. But it should have been a warning that Craven should’ve quit while he was ahead. And he almost did. After making Music of the Heart with Meryl Streep in 1999, he wanted to back away from the horror/thriller genre. But as he had learned in the 1980s while trying to make the movie Deadly Friend, originally titled just Friend, was the same thing Michael Corleone learned – Just when he thought he was out, they pulled him back in.
After Scream 3, Craven began working on a movie called Pulse set to begin filming in the early 2000s at Dimension Films. That was before co-funder Bob Weinstein pulled it during the final stages of pre-production so Craven would be available to shoot the script that Williamson had written. The original idea Williamson had submitted with a serial killer in New York City who discovers he has the tendencies of a werewolf. The script went though rewrites by other writers. But Craven rejected the idea because he said it was too similar in tone to Vampire in Brooklyn, a 1995 box-office and critical bomb in which Eddie Murphy played a vampire.
So, Dimension and Bob and Harvey Weinstein offered Craven more money and ordered more rewrites. The plot’s location switched coasts NYC to Los Angeles and in March 2003, Jesse Eisenberg, Christina Ricci, Skeet Ulrich, Scott Foley, Judy Greer, Omar Epps and Kristina Apanau were cast two months before production was set to begin in January. Rick Baker would be designing the werewolf costumes and special effects. The man had helped rewrite the subgenre with An American Werewolf in London. This time, he would be able to do bipedal werewolves, which he had originally wanted on London before director John Landis refused. The script called for roles for other actors including James Brolin, Corey Feldman, John C. McGinley, Illeana Douglas, Shannon Elizabeth, Scott Baio, Mandy Moore, Heather Langenkamp and Robert Forster.
Filming began in mid-March 2003 and lasted until early June 2003, before it was shut down as the there were six days left during principal photography. Reports indicated executives at Dimension weren’t too happy with the ending. A new one was written and production restarted in mid-November.
Patrick Lussier, who often collaborated with Craven as an editor, said that only about 12 minutes of the original footage of the theatrical version included this footage. However, there had been some changes as making Eisenberg and Ricci’s characters brother and sister. And other characters were morphed into the same or just removed entirely by the time filming wrapped in mid-January of 2004. Gone were Ulrich, Brolin, Foley, Epps, Forster, Feldman, Langenkamp, McGinley and Moore. Also Baker had left because of scheduling conflicts. Lussier, was originally hired to work six weeks during the summer of 2003 but ended up working 19 months as editor and second-unit director.
But still Dimension Films was not happy with the movie and demanded more reshoots which lasted 20 days. And then, there were even more reshoots a fourth time that lasted for 10 days. Eisenberg said shirts were made which had Cursed 4: Back for More embroidered on them. Originally budgeted at $35 million, it costed almost three times that much as estimates said it was more like $100 million total for 100 days of shooting, rewrites and re-editing.
And in hopes to recoup some costs, Dimension cut the movie in post-production by approximately two minutes total to give it an R rating. Craven and Lussier had left to go work on Red Eye. However, it didn’t work. The movie was released in late February of 2005 and got negative reviews and only made about $25 million. Craven had told the New York Post that his contract had called for an R rating and that’s what they filmed over 100 days of shooting. “I thought it was completely disrespectful, and it hurt them too, and it was like they shot themselves in the foot with a shotgun,” he said.
Having seen both versions, I doubt anything could’ve salvaged the movie. Ricci’s character Elli Myers works as an associate producer for The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn. Only he had left the show during the summer of 2004 and was replaced by Greg Ferguson making Kilborn’s cameo much ado about nothing. And supposedly, both Ellie and Jimmy Myers (Eisenberg) are supposed to emit a sexual appeal to anyone (who aren’t family and/or werewolves themselves) that is from them being bitten by a werewolf. But this doesn’t seem to be anything new.
It doesn’t help matters that both Dog Soldiers and Ginger Snaps had been released in the early 2000s and both smaller budgets with more practical effects that were better received by critics and audiences. That could be why the studio demanded rewrites and reshoots. Both Ginger Snaps and Dog Soldiers were produced independently. Soldiers had turned a modest profit of twice its budget of 2.5 million pounds but Ginger only made $527,000 of its $4.5 million budget. Yet, both movies received rave reviews. Both movies are now considered cult classics and they do less with more. I’m more fonder of Soldiers mainly because it’s so outrageous as a story of military soldiers in the Scottish Highlands are hunted by werewolves.
Dimensions was still a subsidy of Disney at the time so it needed to be bigger and better. But neither happened. Rather than use most of Baker’s effects, poorly made CGI was used for many scenes. The movie doesn’t have much of scares except for a scene where Elizabeth’s Becky Morton is attacked by a werewolf while upside down in a car. Then, we see her mangled bloody body bitten in half trying to crawl around. And there’s a nice scene where Jenny Tate (M’ya) is walking through a parking lot where she seems human footprint tracks turn into wolf prints. Craven says this seen in particular was heavily cut. You can tell how it’s all jumbled up.
Since it’s intended to be a horror comedy, that means a lot of the scenes are meant to be funny. They’re not. There’s a subplot about a bully to Jimmy named Bo (Milo Ventimiglia) who ends up being a closeted homosexual and is actually attracted to him. This is supposed to be funny. It isn’t. Mainly because there’s nothing really funny about someone being gay in 2005. And then, there’s supposed to be scenes of Baio showing what a smooth ladies’ man he is. Or was back in the day. Now, that he’s just a crazy born-again Christian conservative, the joke isn’t funny. (I want to add that anytime since the first season of The Larry Sanders Show, anytime a celebrity is shown to be something we don’t expect them to be, it’s not funny. This has become a tired trope that has been overused ad nauseam for 30 years and counting.)
Portia de Rossi pops up in two scenes as some carnival gypsy fortune teller named Zela in two scenes. And there’s an early blink and you’ll miss it role by Nick Offerman as a police officer. Yet the tone’s too busy winking at itself to really offer the terror and thrills that the Scream movies did.
Joshua Jackson appears periodically as Emily’s boyfriend, Jake Taylor, who should just be wearing a sign that says “I’m a Werewolf!” because that’s his whole reason for being in the movie. And Judy Greer as Emily’s colleague, Joanie, follows the Law of the Most Extraneous Character and you guessed it! She’s the werewolf killing the people. She’s had the hots for Jake and was turned into a werewolf by him. So she’s has been killing the other women because Jake is a ladies’ man and she wants him all for herself. This leads to a scene where Emily gets Joanie so upset when she’s transformed that the werewolf bursts out of hiding to give her the middle finger. (Yet, it’s almost like it’s giving us the middle finger.)
It’s not even a flick that’s so bad it’s good. There has been repeated request for Dimension to release the Craven Cut. But Lussier has said that isn’t possible because the ending was never shut. And since Craven passed away in 2015, it’s unlikely that jumbling his cut with what was filmed for the later versions would make much sense. Even worse, the Weinsteins took Dimension with them when they split from Disney in 2005 as they formed The Weinstein Company, which went defunct in 2018 following the reports of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assaults. So, the film label has changed hands and there’s a question on who holds the rights and if the cut footage still exists. Also, the movie was a disaster and is mostly remembered now for all the problems that happened during production. Who knows is what was originally written was even going to be any better?
In the end, the movie should be seen as a warning sign on the dangers on how a movie can get out of hand if the wrong people are making the decisions. Craven said he learned a lot from making this movie for two-and-a-half years and that was not to do anything for money. So money is the real curse because it’s the root of all evils.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 