Opening Act: Theater of Blood, Eh?
If Prom Night was Canada’s glittery disco prom massacre, Curtains is its avant-garde sibling—moody, disheveled, and clutching a broken wine glass. A slasher dressed up in arthouse clothing, the film lives in that strange liminal space where giallo fever dreams meet grindhouse thrift. It’s about actresses clawing at each other for a role while a hag-masked killer stalks them through a snowbound mansion. If that doesn’t sound like cinema to you, then perhaps you’re the kind of person who prefers polite conversation at dinner parties instead of throwing knives.
Richard Ciupka, the cinematographer-turned-director who wanted to make an “arthouse thriller,” clashed with producer Peter Simpson, who wanted another bloody cash cow. The result is a movie that feels like two films wrestled in the dark—high-concept giallo elegance against pure slasher stupidity—and neither quite won. But that’s exactly what makes Curtains worth watching: it’s broken in fascinating ways, and those cracks let the weird light in.
The Plot, If You Insist
The story begins with Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar), a respected actress who goes full method by committing herself to an asylum to prepare for a role. Instead of genius, she finds betrayal—her mentor, the sleazy director Jonathan Stryker (John Vernon, radiating sexual menace like a furnace leaking gas), ditches her in the loony bin so he can audition younger, fresher women for the same part.
Soon, six women descend on Stryker’s snowbound mansion for the audition of their lives. Each is a walking archetype—the stand-up comic, the ballerina, the ice skater, the ingénue—each as hungry as wolves circling a carcass. Enter the killer in a grotesque hag mask, swinging a sickle like Mother Goose after a breakdown. What follows is a blood opera, staged with the dead seriousness of a Bergman film and the body count of a Friday the 13th sequel.
Where It Shines: The Hag and the Ice
Every slasher needs its calling card, and Curtains has two: the hag mask and the ice-skating murder. The hag, with her rubbery wrinkles and hollow eyes, is less “Halloween-store mask” and more “nightmare of seeing yourself in the mirror after a bender.” It’s grotesque, funny, and strangely poetic—aging as horror, showbiz as meat grinder.
Then there’s the famous ice-skating sequence. Christie, the aspiring starlet, glides alone across a frozen pond while the hag, sickle in hand, glides after her. The camera lingers, the snow falls, and for a moment it becomes almost beautiful—death skating in circles, catching its breath before striking. When Christie’s head is finally taken, it feels less like a murder and more like a curtain call. If slashers are remembered for set pieces, Curtains has one of the best.
A Haunted Production
Part of the film’s charm is its mess. Director Ciupka abandoned the project midway, and producer Peter Simpson cobbled together the rest with reshoots and rewrites. You can feel the scars: scenes lurch from surreal arthouse tension to trashy exploitation without warning. Characters disappear into plot holes wide enough to skate on.
But here’s the thing: the disjointedness makes the film dreamlike. It has that hypnotic, uneven rhythm you get from movies that shouldn’t exist but somehow do. The snowbound setting, the cavernous mansion, the competing actresses—it all feels like a fever-dream audition tape directed by a ghost.
Kael Would’ve Had a Field Day
Pauline Kael liked to skewer films that took themselves too seriously, and Curtains practically paints a target on its chest. The women rehearse lines about insanity while the film itself unravels into absurdity. John Vernon smarms his way through seductions, making every scene feel like the prelude to a restraining order. And the actresses—God bless them—play their roles with total conviction, even as they’re asked to scream, skate, or die mid-monologue.
Kael might have mocked the film’s pretensions, but she’d also relish its boldness. Here was a Canadian horror movie trying to graft art cinema aesthetics onto a body count formula. It’s like serving caviar with cheese whiz, and somehow the flavors work.
Bukowski’s Take: Blood in the Snow
From a Bukowski angle, Curtains is a story about desperation. These actresses aren’t just auditioning for a role—they’re auditioning for existence. They flirt, scheme, betray, all under the gaze of a director who treats them as disposable props. It’s Hollywood in miniature: a meat market where beauty ages like milk and ambition is a sickness. The hag mask is the perfect metaphor—what all these women fear most isn’t death, it’s irrelevance.
And Bukowski would’ve loved the setting: a mansion cut off by snow, everyone drinking, screwing, backstabbing, while outside the cold waits with its own patience. The killings feel inevitable, not just because the script demands them, but because ambition eats people alive long before the knife gets them.
The Flaws (Which Are Delicious)
Yes, the film is incoherent. Yes, whole subplots vanish like whiskey at a wrap party. Yes, the killer reveal is both ludicrous and underwhelming. But slashers aren’t meant to be airtight. They’re campfire tales with entrails, morality plays dressed up in fake blood. Curtains doesn’t fail because it’s sloppy; it succeeds because its sloppiness feels like part of the nightmare.
And those flaws—like Samantha’s laughable “method acting” in an asylum—give the movie its cult charm. You don’t watch Curtains to admire narrative cohesion. You watch it because it’s a beautiful mess that sometimes stumbles into brilliance.
The Legacy: From Trash to Treasure
When Curtains opened in 1983, critics shrugged. It barely made a dent at the box office. But then came late-night TV, VHS bargain bins, and eventually Blu-ray restoration. Now, it’s a cult favorite—proof that films don’t need polish to endure. They just need an image that sticks: a hag on skates, a head in a toilet, snow falling over dreams that never come true.
And maybe that’s fitting. Curtains is about actresses clawing for a part they’ll never get, watched over by a director who’s already chosen his favorite. The film itself clawed through production hell, dismissed at release, only to finally earn its role decades later as a cult classic.
Final Bow
So is Curtains a great film? Maybe not. But it’s a memorable one. It’s horror as tragicomedy, where ambition, betrayal, and mortality all share the same stage. The kills are gruesome, the tone is cracked, and the snow never stops falling.
In its own broken way, Curtains captures something truer than a slick studio slasher ever could: the theater of survival, the horror of aging, the comedy of ambition. And like any good play, it ends with applause—this time from cult fans who finally saw the beauty in its madness.
Verdict: A slasher with delusions of grandeur, Curtains is equal parts giallo nightmare and snowbound soap opera. It’s messy, surreal, and unforgettable—a cult gem that proves sometimes the best performances happen when the script falls apart.
