Curtains 1983

Stumbled across this one on another of those curated lists. I had reservations about it but in all honesty, it wasn't all that bad for a movie from the 1960's... except this one was done in 1983. It was that bad, ladies and germs. It had all the earmarks, the drama, the intrigue, the Oscar-winning performance that you would expect from a low-budget (I have no idea what the budget actually was, but this film was low-budget performance, for sure), little-heard-of film. There was nothing to enjoy about this one. You might see (as I did, in the aforementioned curated list) some blurbs here and there about the "ice skating murder".... Trust me, you won't miss it. This was made in 1983, so the teen horror flicks were already out and about: Friday the 13th , Nightmare on Elm Street , etc. This thing acted like showing any type of violence was still taboo in motion pictures and the "ice skating murder" was laughable. In addition to incredibly underperformed acting, the lighting throughout was simply awful: too dark to really make out anything that was going on for almost the entire duration of the film. The storyline was so thin you could spit through it and never get it wet, and the ending?... I'm still scratching my head over what happened. In fact, the final ... I would say at least the final 20 (if not 30) minutes of the movie are so rushed and discordant that I watched it twice trying to figure out who did what, where, how, and I guess I'll never know WHY. While the name Brian de Palma garners some attention, this atrocity does not. Do yourself a favor and spend this 90 minutes in a far more productive way. This was just bad.

An '80s slasher movie I never heard of? How can that be? Oh, I get it. It's, uh, not very good.
I only found Curtains because I love horror movies set during winter, particularly when there is snow.
While there are several great qualities here, the movie overall just falls flat. Where to begin? I think it's important to understand that, much like other slashers from the era, this is a whodunit; trouble is, all of the girls look alike, so I was never sure who was dead and who wasn't. What the movie gets right is the score, the lighting, the overall atmosphere, and the tension.
Curtains has a very slow build, but that's fine, because it does a magnificent job of becoming claustrophobic and interesting as the bodycount raises.
I thought I was going to like this, but the ending just comes out of nowhere, and there was a plot hole so big, I thought a scene was missing or I blacked out. Really just lazy writing. I mean, most slasher movies rest on the explanation being "crazy though." But this? Come on!
All that will stick with me about Curtains is the killer's mask - truly creepy. That and how well the cold, dark environment was captured on film.
If you love old slasher movies - e.g., Black Christmas (1974), Friday the 13th (1980), My Bloody Valentine (1981) - I'd still recommend this. Just know that it hits different than those. That is to say, it feels as if they wanted to make a psychological horror movie, but wanted to cash in on the slasher boom.