OPINION
Is there such a thing as a cursed movie? Actors, tending to be as superstitious as they are ignorant, apparently like to think so. After all, these are the sort of ninnies who not only refuse to whistle backstage, but can’t bring themselves to say ‘Macbeth’, or ‘break a leg’. Although they will say that Joe Biden is a competent president.
But the idea of ‘cursed’ movies persists, even though, looked at dispassionately, the claims hold up less than even the (non-existent) curse of Tutankhamen’s tomb.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, horror movies tend to attract the ‘cursed’ sobriquet more than others. But, are they, really?
Consider The Exorcist.
There were several deaths before the film released that bizarrely mirrored some of the deaths depicted on-screen.
For example, Jack MacGowran, whose character Burke Dennings is killed by the Pazuzu-possessed Regan in the film, died from complications of influenza shortly before the film’s release.
Except that Dennings dies, in the film, from being thrown from a high window and down the famous ‘Exorcist steps’. Which is hardly a ‘bizarre mirror’ of dying from the flu… during a flu epidemic.
Likewise, Vasiliki Maliaros, who played the mother of Father Damien Karras, died from “natural causes” that same year.
Well, when you’re 90 years old, there’s hardly a reason to put “natural causes” in scare quotes.
The rest of the Exorcist ‘curse’ – fires, back injuries and so on, can be squarely laid at the feet of lax safety standards, not supernatural agents.
While it’s a tragic coincidence that both Heather O’Rourke and Dominique Dunne, from Poltergeist, both died young (although O’Rourke died a full five years after the movie came out), it was hardly an ‘untimely end’ for Julian Beck, who played the sinister preacher, Kane. Beck was 60 and had been diagnosed with stomach cancer two years before he even acted in Poltergeist II.
One horror film plagued with a series of genuinely bizarre coincidences and tragedies is The Omen.
It began when Academy Award-winner Gregory Peck, who plays the film’s protagonist, cancelled a flight at the last minute for unknown reasons. Chillingly, the plane he nearly boarded wound up crashing to the ground, killing everyone on board. To make things even more eerie, it landed on top of a vehicle that had members of the pilot’s family inside.
When Peck did eventually board a plane to England for filming on The Omen, his plane was struck by lightning. In a totally different instance, writer David Seltzer’s plane was also struck by lightning while he was on his way to film.
Later, executive producer Mace Neufeld said that he, Peck and others affiliated with the film had planned to dine out at a restaurant one evening – only for that building to be destroyed in a violent explosion.
Not as surprising as it may seem, given that the movie was filmed in London in the mid-’70s. You know, when the IRA were full-swing in a bombing campaign that killed 175 people and injured 10,000 more.
But then there’s this:
In an eerie coincidence, the special effects artist who created The Omen’s decapitation scene was involved in a head-on car crash that decapitated his girlfriend.
Finally, while shooting a scene in the film, Gregory Peck’s stuntman was attacked by trained rottweilers. For some reason, the dogs went into a frenzy and ignored their trainer’s commands. The stuntman survived, but sustained serious injuries.
Other ‘curses’ may seem plausible at first blush, but turn out to be nothingburgers made up of superstition and ignorance.
In the mid-1950s, John Wayne was one of the biggest actors in Hollywood, and he was set to star in what was sure to be a classic epic: 1956’s The Conqueror, which saw Wayne portraying the 13th-century Mongol warlord, Genghis Khan.
Okay: John Wayne in yellowface is a bad start. But that’s not what earned The Conqueror its ‘cursed’ reputation.
According to The Guardian, the film was shot downwind of a nuclear weapons testing facility in the Utah desert, and in the years since, many members of its cast and crew developed cancer, allegedly from exposure to nuclear radiation.
Of the 220 people involved with the production, 91 developed a range of cancers, and 46 died as a result – including John Wayne, his co-star Susan Hayward, and director Dick Powell.
Woo-ooo, scary. Except… that death rate is entirely within the average for American adults of that age at that time. Especially when, as in Wayne’s case, they’re heavy smokers.
But one of the most apparently cursed movies in Hollywood history isn’t a horror, either. Rather, it’s the comedy Atuk.
Based on Canadian author Mordecai Richler’s 1963 novel The Incomparable Atuk, the film has had a number of directors and actors attached to it, but unfortunately, tragedy has prevented the film from ever coming to fruition.
The movie had been in development limbo since the early ’70s, but it wasn’t until 1982 that a headline actor signed on.
John Belushi.
Unfortunately, on March 5, 1982, Belushi died from a drug overdose at the age of 33.
Six years later, in 1988, the film finally found its next star in Sam Kinison. In this instance, production on the film actually began, and Kinison managed to shoot a few scenes of Atuk. But as [scriptwriter Tod Carroll] later told the Los Angeles Times, Kinison wanted parts of the script to be rewritten, ultimately leading the project to once again be abandoned.
And then on April 10, 1992, Kinison died in a car accident. He was 38.
Shortly after, John Candy expressed interest in Atuk – then died after a heart attack at the age of 43 on March 4, 1994.
Soon enough, comedy legend Chris Farley was in talks to finally bring Atuk to the big screen. Like the others before him, though, Chris Farley faced an untimely death, overdosing in December 1997.
All That’s Interesting
I don’t suppose it’s too late to get Adam Sandler or James Cordon interested in the script?