The Curse was also the directorial debut of actor David Keith, an actor who came to fame with parts in the likes of An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) and Firestarter (1984). It starred Wil Wheaton, who was caught just after the success of Stand By Me (1986) and just before his ongoing role as Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-93). The script was from David Chaskin, who had just written A Nightmare on Elm Street Part II: Freddy’s Revenge (1985) and would eventually go onto write something good with I, Madman/Hardcover (1989).

Unlike most copies of Re-Animator, indeed most 1980s popcorn splatter films, The Curse takes itself relatively seriously. Unfortunately, this is one case where the tongue-in-cheek treatment would have benefited the film no end. Initially, David Keith does an okay job setting up the scenario, drawing some well-defined characters – the fundamentalist stepfather, the sexually frustrated wife, the dumb hick son, the greedy realtor. While David Keith’s set-up is interesting – and with a better director could have made for a potentially good film – his gradual addition of horror elements to the mix quickly takes the exercise down into Grade Z territory. Here Keith’s direction is terrible. He evokes nothing in the way of atmosphere. All the effects – giant fruit squirting goo, people with sores and running pus, and in one hilarious scene giant chickens pecking a young girl – are cheesy, frequently laughable and without the slightest degree of conviction. There is also a tinny, cheap-sounding score. Between David Keith’s direction, the bad effects and bad score, The Curse nosedives big time.

David Keith has directed two other films – the equally cheesy adventure film The Further Adventures of Tennessee Buck (1988) and the thriller Waterville (2003) – and then got the message and subsequently returned to acting.

The film was a modest enough hit principally on video for the producers to make two sequels – Curse II: The Bite (1988) and Curse III: Blood Sacrifice (1991), none of which are connected to this, or even each other, in any way except name and featuring gooey makeup effects. A fourth entry was to be made with Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice but this was eventually released as Catacombs (1993).

Other films based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft include:- The Haunted Palace (1963), Die, Monster, Die/Monster of Terror (1965), The Shuttered Room (1966) and The Dunwich Horror (1969). The big success in the modern era was Stuart Gordon’s splattery black comedy version of Re-Animator (1985), which popularised Lovecraft on film. This led to a host of B-budget Lovecraft adaptations, including Stuart Gordon’s subsequent From Beyond (1986), The Unnameable (1988), The Resurrected (1992), Necronomicon (1993), The Unnamable II: The Statement of Randolph Carter (1993), Lurking Fear (1994), Gordon’s Dagon (2001), and other works such as The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (2003), Beyond the Wall of Sleep (2006), Cool Air (2006), Chill (2007), Cthulu (2007), The Tomb (2007), Colour from the Dark (2008), The Dunwich Horror (2009), Pickman’s Muse (2010) and The Whisperer in Darkness (2011). Also of interest is Cast a Deadly Spell (tv movie, 1991), a tv movie set in an alternate world where magic works and where the central character is a detective named H.P. Lovecraft; Juan Piquer Simon’s cheap and loosely inspired Cthulu Mansion (1992); John Carpenter’s Lovecraft homage In the Mouth of Madness (1995); and the fanboy comedy The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulu (2009). Lovecraft’s key work of demonic lore The Necronomicon also makes appearances in films such as Equinox (1970), The Evil Dead II (1987) and Army of Darkness (1992), and was also borrowed as an alternate retitling for Jesus Franco’s surreal and otherwise unrelated Succubus/Necronomicon (1969) about a BDSM dancer.