Cathy's Curse (1977)

A Canadian production that is clearly aimed at cashing in on everything from The Exorcist to The Omen, taking in Rosemary's Baby along the way, Cathy's Curse (1977), in contrast to the A-movie production values of those titles, is very much a B-level production.  It's opening, a flashback to thirty years previously, with a man and his young daughter burned to death in a fiery car crash, is probably the best part of the film:  vividly filmed against a snowy night time landscape, it seems to be setting the tone for the rest of the film.  Unfortunately, though, what follows is decidedly stodgy, indifferently filmed and moving at a pedestrian pace through a series of genre clichés, none of them particularly well, or even atmospherically, staged.  From a contemporary perspective, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the script is its prefiguring of the misogynistic brainwashing that modern day so called influencers like the Tate brothers go in for.  Except that here, it isn't a young male child who has been so 'influenced', but the young girl who was burned to death at the beginning.  She and her father had been abandoned by her mother, who took her brother with her, with the father subsequently railing against the evils of women, how they are all 'bitches' and 'whores'.  The film's main plot involves the brother, along with his wife and young daughter, Cathy, moving back to the old family home, where the daughter finds herself possessed by the vengeful, woman-hating, spirit of the dead girl, her aunt.

The depiction of the possession itself is strictly by the numbers - it takes place the via the medium of an ugly looking doll she finds in the attic (which occasionally comes to life to scare people) and a photo of the dead girl, whose eyes glow green when she's getting Cathy to do especially evil things.  Cathy is predictably unpleasant to the other local kids, defies her mother and the housekeeper, but plays up to and manipulates her father and the handyman.  It's not just human females the ghost hates - the handyman's female dog (which growls at the possessed child), also ends up in the firing line.  There are all the usual manifestations of snakes and spiders, baths full of blood, food suddenly turning rotten and maggot infested and a couple of deaths.  Cathy's main target, her mother, is recovering from a nervous breakdown after a miscarriage, so, obviously, nobody believes her claims about Cathy being possessed.  It all builds to a decidedly underwhelming climax and abrupt ending.  The film as a whole has a somewhat disjointed feel, as if there are scenes missing - either cut or unfilmed - and the script serves its cast up plenty of clunky dialogue, probably one of the reasons why the performances seem detached and uninvolved.  As a horror film, Cathy's Curse is a non-starter - there is absolutely no sense of urgency in the film, either in the acting performances or the direction, resulting in a complete lack of tension and suspense, while the effects work is poor and there isn't even any gore to enliven the proceedings.  To be fair, while it most certainly isn't a good film, Cathy's Curse is blandly watchable, but entirely forgettable.