Blu-ray Review: Cathy's Curse

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the CATHY'S CURSE Blu-ray;
I am taking all my older copies and throwing them away (not really)
I am marching down the hall to hand a drink to good ol' Paul:
Her curse is marching on.

(Chorus)
Glory, Glory, Cathy's Blu-ray!
Glory, Glory, Cathy's Blu-ray!
Glory, Glory, Cathy's Blu-ray!
Her curse is marching on.

Forgive me. I got a little excited there. It's just that I was kind of on the fence about upgrading my CATHY'S CURSE based on the fact that I've already watched it a hundred times and I was thinking my moola might be better spent on something new- wrong! Excuse the cliché but it's an absolute revelation. I'm not even talking about the visual details that miraculously surface or the vibrantly blasting seventies flavored hues (has yellow wallpaper ever been more maddening?) that this remarkable upgrade allows. This blessed Blu-ray features a director's cut that is nine minutes longer than the U.S. version! Because I know every inch of this movie by heart, being exposed to new scenes is semi mind-blowing. Now I know what it must feel like to have repressed childhood memories recovered. This is my home but I've never seen it like this before. Doors open into rooms that I had no idea existed. I better lie down and put a cold washcloth on my head. Where am I?

I previously spoke of my CATHY'S CURSE obsession HERE and we were honored to interview CATHY'S CURSE star RANDI ALLEN over HERE but the news of the day is that suddenly this movie is starting to make sense to me (and that can't be good). In this longer version, we learn from the get-go a piece of knowledge denied in the U.S cut, that the Gimbal family had just recently suffered the death of Cathy's newborn sibling (!!!) It's one sentence spoken by the housekeeper but it makes mother Beverly's erratic behavior borderline understandable. Another unearthed tidbit involves father George Gimble and a statue that was meaningful to him in his youth. He picks it up to appreciate it only to have it break in his hands and much is made of him mending it with glue (only to have Cathy smash it to smithereens during a fit). I don't know why this new information is important to me, it just is…

God help me for cramming meaning into this nonsensical movie but to me, CATHY'S CURSE is suddenly about accepting the things you can't fix and becoming aware of the things you can. The film's most notoriously bonkers scene- involving the housekeeper cleaning up a broken plate (that Cathy has thrown to the floor) by picking up a single shard among many and proclaiming "There, all done" perfectly illustrates the household's dependency on blind denial. In a similar vein, mother Beverly loses her bearings and is sent to the hospital for a couple of days and then "There, all done" she's meant to be cured of the grief of losing a child. Throughout the movie everything seems to be breaking: pictures, mirrors, bottles and light fixtures shatter all over the place. The curse is only broken when Beverly opens the doll's sewn shut eyes and realizes that she is repeating the house's tragic history by abandoning one child in favor of the other. It's as if she finally accepts that she can't change what happened to her baby so she should focus on aiding her troubled first born. Help! This movie makes sense!

But like Jesus's face appearing in a taco- chances are I'm simply attaching the message I desire to see upon this familiar, possibly arbitrary data. But that's cool too! That's what I love about movies and art in general. It's like a dumb pop song suddenly becoming poignant because your heart just got clobbered. Maybe I am merely projecting my own baggage upon the screen, hearing a tune never intended by the filmmaker but isn't that perfectly fine? Isn't it cool that a film you've seen a million times, a film that's known for its indecipherable randomness could still come out of nowhere and communicate some kind of wisdom? I think so! Hats off to SEVERIN FILMS for treating this too often ignored movie with the care and respect it deserves and for consequently improving my life forever. Thanks to SEVERIN, Cathy's curse of a shabby image and a story incompletely told is now lifted (and there's even a charming and highly informative interview with beloved RANDI ALLEN as a special feature and that's worth the price alone). Take it from someone who's usually somewhat apathetic about upgrading my films from DVD to Blu-ray, SEVERIN's CATHY'S CURSE release is a marvel-worthy, non-stop treasure.