Cathy’s Curse (1977)

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Day 59 of Sobriety.

Here’s another film that I really don’t know where to begin with. Cathy’s Curse is a French-Canadian co-production that was shot in snowy Quebec. It is about a family who moves into the father’s old family home. However, the father’s family has a tragic history, and lingering supernatural forces in the house begin to exert a malevolent influence, particularly on their eight-year-old daughter, Cathy.

This is one of those films that is either derided as complete garbage or enjoyed ironically as a “cult classic.” It is extremely low budget, the script is full of bizarre non-sequiturs, and the acting is generally pretty wooden. There are so many off-the-wall scenes and crazy one-liners that it would be the ideal film to watch while getting wrecked with a group of friends and laughing your asses off.

But not me. I watched on my own, stone cold sober.

And I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s not frightening, and I couldn’t take it too seriously—I did shake my head at some of the goofball dialogue and outlandish scenes, but there was also something about the film that struck a deeper chord with me. It is another story about an everyday family struggling against supernatural forces that conspire to undo them, while they are simply striving to have a simple, normal life. In that respect, it is a strain of horror film that I have a large soft spot for. In addition, the pervading oddball weirdness of the film imbued it with a kind of otherworldly dream-like quality that I also greatly appreciate. The film is kind of like its own world—a forlorn snow-globe in which logic breaks down and anything can happen.

One scene that was particularly interesting from an alcohol/sobriety point of view was a characteristically strange scene in which Cathy is left in the care of Paul, the rather disheveled handyman who is helping the family with the house. Paul is clearly an alcoholic, and the possessed Cathy plies him with copious amounts of whiskey. While drinking the whiskey Paul seems to have a kind of seizure, and is beset by various toxic/disease-carrying animals: snakes, spiders, and rats. The film is so randomly strange that it is hard to say with any confidence that the alcohol=poison allegory is intentional, but I thought it was an effectively creepy scene.

Am I the first person to appreciate Cathy’s Curse non-ironically? Reading around the internet, it seems like I could be, and that’s fine. It’s no Exorcist, but it succeeded in drawing me me into its strange, confusing world.

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