Mark of the Horny Beast in Wes Craven’s ‘Cursed’
Chad Collins
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It was admittedly disappointing to read the Scream Factory Cursed Collector’s Edition announcement and find that, like so many other releases, any semblance of a director’s cut, missing footage, or alternative scenes were all but nonexistent. It certainly makes sense given how tumultuous a production it was. Casting was changed midway through. Plus the werewolf effects were layered like a cake, with some practical, some CGI, and more practical from several different FX houses. Cast members remarked how, toward the end of production and reshoots, there was arguably enough footage for three different movies. Cursed was the, well, cursed love child assembled from their remains. It wasn’t great, though given Dimension Films’ reputation, it makes sense. Cursed also isn’t especially great conventionally. But its R-rated cut packs a delightful wallop of horniness and monster carnage.
Seriously, Cursed is horny. Even the theatrical cut doesn’t shy away from the sheer seductive qualities of Kevin Williamson’s script, Wes Craven’s direction, and Joshua Jackson’s chokehold on downtown Los Angeles. It is abounding with double-entendres, sexy early-aughts stars, and even a formative coming-out from one Milo Ventimiglia that all but defined my early adolescence. If I didn’t know I was gay before then, Ventimiglia professing his unbridled attraction for Jesse Eisenberg made it clearer than Judy Greer’s lycanthropy.
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The crux of Cursed, for those who may not know, is a werewolf curse taking over Los Angeles. After rewrites and reshoots, the story settled on Christina Ricci’s Ellie Myers and Eisenberg’s Jimmy, her brother. After a car accident on Mulholland Drive, Ellie and Jimmy are bitten by an unseen creature (a werewolf). They then find themselves entangled in a web of supernatural abilities and full moon horniness. Desperate to stop the curse and the slayings around town, they endeavor to identify and stop the werewolf who cursed them, the only way to break the chain.
Intermittently, everyone is very, very horny. Greer’s Joanie has the hots for Ellie’s playboy boyfriend, Jake (Joshua Jackson). She makes that clear at every possible turn. Ventimiglia’s Bo harbors repressed feelings for Jimmy, and Jimmy’s pronounced sexual aura has rendered him an insatiable stud at school. Everyone wants a piece of Jimmy, werewolf or not. It’s an unconventional choice, especially seeing how protracted the production was. But it works in spite of the interference. If anything, the sheer horniness of it all makes the entire enterprise worthwhile.
With such a conventionally good-looking cast (and on account of some shoddy, too-many-cooks effects work), most of the werewolf mayhem occurs in human form. Judy Greer wields a big sword and wanders around a nightclub in a billowy purple dress. Joshua Jackson gets hot and heavy with Ricci, remarking they’ll be the sexiest werewolf couple on the west coast once Jimmy is dead (he’s a burden). It’s knowingly, conspicuously staged to augment raging hormones. It’s a sort of lycanthropic, cinematic pheromone—feralmone—machine whose intent was to rile up its audience in unexpected ways.
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There’s an innate animal magnetism in the werewolf—a thread adroitly exploited by the Twilight series. For better or worse, the innate beastliness of it all appeals to almost primal, horny instincts. In other words, see: Beauty and the Beast, Beast (starring a sensational Jessie Buckley), La Bête, Beastly, or any other of dozens of (insert beast here) movies. Cursed is game enough to embrace it, from casting to narrative unspoolin. Bo’s queer awakening was unconventional for a $70 million horror movie in 2005, after all.
X recently demonstrated how horror movies can be certifiably sexy in all the right ways. The genre has historic roots in nudity and sexuality, though it hasn’t always been handled with a delicate werewolf’s touch. The slasher boom was abounding with exploitative nudity and sex (almost always heterosexual), and as aptly put by Jada Pinkett Smith in Scream 2, “what does that got to do with the plot?” Cursed is sex-positive and horny as all get out. It’s a howling good time of excess, camp, and abundance. There are butts and chests and sweaty young adults running around LA, biting and chewing and transforming. The production itself may have been cursed, but with the right perspective, the final product is anything but.
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