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Finally, we’re at Curse.
Fucking Paul Rudd is in this. Not in a minor role either. The first acting credit literally goes “Starring and Introducing Paul Stephen Rudd.” So, this was his first big Hollywood role, even before Clueless.
Anyway, this was a mess. As I alluded to last time, Miramax and its two heads, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, were the producers this time with their distribution label Dimension Films distribution. And as has become tradition with “Harvey Scissorhands”, the production was a gigantic mess. If you know anything about the Weinsteins (aside from, well, you know), they are notorious for their constant meddling in films, and this film was very much a victim of this. The script was constantly being revised, to the point where the ending was being rewritten and handed out to the actors when they were filming! Literally, they would write it and hand it to the actors before they went to set! Not to mention constant battles between the director and the Weinsteins, scenes were deleted and there was a lot of reshoots to try to salvage the film, the entire ending of the film had to be revised due to a bad test screening- except it involved the presence of Dr. Loomis, and Donald Pleasence had unfortunately died after principal shooting had ended. It’s a whole thing that has a ton of conflict around it.
I might’ve sought out the Producer’s Cut, but this whole project was very last minute and I didn’t want to get a DVD.
Still, I did see the original ending, and yeah, it’s way better than the finished film, which made very little sense (just featuring Loomis screaming at Michael’s discarded mask) and just didn’t explain anything.
This ending at least has more to do with the Thorn cult and actually has an interesting conceit that Loomis now has the curse of Thorn and has to carry it with him.
It’s kind of a shame the finished film had to leave off with such a terrible ending for Loomis, given this was one of Donald Pleasence’s last films (he was apparently very ill during filming and his role is slightly less than the other films). Even if they couldn’t follow up on this, this might’ve been at least a…
