It's an okay slasher movie in the vein of Black Christmas. Standard set up, someone's killing girls in a remote location with an attempt at a few more atmospheric moments. The girls are very thinly defined and the twist at the end is par for the course. You could do worse, but this isn't super memorable.

After the box office success of Prom Night, producer Peter R. Simpson wanted to create an "adult" slasher. After three troubled years, he had this film, which didn't do all that well with audiences or critics. That said - after years of cable viewing and even more years where the film wasn't available on DVD, it's become something of a cult classic. Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar, Welcome to Blood City, The Brood, All the Kind Strangers) commits herself to an asylum so that she can prepare for the role of her lifetime: Audra. Yet once inside, she learns that her director and lover Johnathan Stryker (John Vernon, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Animal House) has actually left her there to rot.That's because a whole new group of young girls are about to audition for the role. Like Amanda, who has a dream that she sees a large doll in the road. When she goes to get it, she's run over. And when she wakes up, a killer in an old hag mask stabs her and steals the doll. The five remaining girls show up to audition for Stryker at his mansion: Patti (Lynne Griffin, Strange Brew and Black Christmas, two of the most Canadian movies ever), a stand-up comedian. Brooke (Linda Thorson, Tara King from TV's The Avengers), an actress. Laurian, a ballet dancer. Tara, a musician. And Christie (Lesleh Donaldson, Canada's top screen queen, thanks to roles in Happy Birthday to Me, Deadly Eyes and Funeral Home), an ice skater. And then Samantha shows up!The first night everyone is in the house, Tara and Matt, the caretaker, hook up in a jacuzzi. So does Christie and Stryker, but she pays in the price in the film's best scene when she gets her throat cut while ice skating. Her head ends up in a toilet bowl, which is pretty shocking even for a slasher, and Brooke freaks out upon finding it. So of course, Stryker hooks up with her.All Laurian wants to do is dance, so she gets stabbed. And while Brooke is banging Stryker, they're both shot and killed, falling down through a window. Tara runs from the mansion and finds Matthews body in the jacuzzi. Even though she escapes the killer three times, the fourth time is never the charm because things don't work in fours. She is dragged into a ventilation shaft and killed.Samantha and Patti celebrate with a toast, as Samantha tells her about killing Stryker and Brook. Patti is shocked and reveals that she is the killer, then murders Samantha. We cut to her in a mental asylum where she acts out the film for the other inmates.Lynne Griffin recalls filming an alternate ending where Patti would read a monologue to all of her victims while on stage. It was rejected, yet another issue in a production so tenuous that director Richard Ciupka has his name listed as Jonathan Stryker in the credits. Yes, the same person who is in this movie as the director.To be fair: this movie is a mess. It barely came together and while there are moments of suspense and one great kill, it's amazing that it came together to be a barely coherent movie at all.

Every now and again, Canada produced a competent horror film back in they day. Though not quite as memorable as Black Christmas or My Bloody Valentine, Curtains offers some good acting, atmosphere, and a few chilling scenes. The plot centers around a sleazy veteran director who invites six young actresses to his secluded property in order to audition them for a big part in an upcoming project. Its also clear from early on that these women mostly feel obligated to audition in the bedroom, as well. But before all of this is to happen, the director has his usual lead actress committed to an insane asylum, presumably to research the part, but more likely to get her out of the way in order to use the other actresses. She is able to get out just in time to participate in the auditions. And the moment these women show up, someone wearing a hideous mask begins killing them. Who is doing the killing? Stick with it to the conclusion to find out.The film scores early points for depicting the depressing and frightening world inside an insane asylum. You can see the toll it would take on someone, even if they weren't initially insane. The atmosphere shifts to that of isolation once the actresses find themselves snowed in with the domineering director. Early victims of the murdered are thought to have just left because they couldn't take the pressure. "Even with the roads impassible?" someone asks. This is simply dismissed, but it seemed like a good question. One flaw the film makes is not letting us get to know these women any deeper than one or maybe two traits. Most are just there to be slaughtered. The killer is pretty creepy. I hadn't seen this in at least 25 years up until this morning, but I always remembered the "skating scene". Genuinely frightening. Also any scene with the creepy doll. The acting is quite good. Especially from John Vernon and Lynne Griffin. He is pompous and sleazy, but not over the top. His character seems to know how to elicit a good performance, one way or the other. This isn't the first memorable Canadian film for Griffin. I remember her as the first victim in Black Christmas. Wasn't she in Strange Brew, too? As far as guessing who the killer is... the longer you watch, the more obvious it is. Clearly it is one of the women, but as more of them die, you lose potential suspects. And of course the most logical person could not be the actual killer. I think the ending on youtube is different than I remember it from back in the 80s. I thought it had Patti performing her stand-up routine in front of all the dead victims. But here she was giving it to the zombie-like patients of an asylum. Either this is a different version, or I didn't remember it correctly. Either ending works. 7 of 10 stars.The Hound.

"Curtains" was one of the last gasps to come out of the Canadian tax shelter era. Actually, it apparently wouldn't have been had the movie not had a lot of production problems that resulted in the movie taking several years to complete. The production problems are unfortunately clear while watching the movie; there are some plot details that are not very coherent, and some scenes play out in a kind of incomprehensible manner. But I think the movie would still have been a disappointment without the production problems. It's a very slow-moving exercise; it takes almost a third of the movie to set up the situation, and there are only two murders in the movie's first hour of running time. Gorehounds will be further let down, since the level of blood in the movie is by itself only worthy of a PG rating at most. I admit the movie is not without merit. There is some style injected in here and there, the best part being the genuinely creepy ice skating scene. But these stylistic touches only add up to a few minutes of the total running time. The rest of the movie has all those aforementioned problems and a lot more. It's no surprise why the movie's director used a pseudonym.