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| Courtesy: Scream Factory |
In a genuinely shocking announcement for several reasons, Scream Factory announced yesterday that they are working on a Collector's Edition blu-ray of Wes Craven's much-maligned - and I would argue, unfairly so - 2005 film Cursed. Granted, the announcement did not go as planned: Scream Factory's hand was very much forced by a leak reported by blu-ray release news page Dawn of the Discs, who had previously picked up on a similar leak about Scream's Halloween 1-5 UHDs. Rather than trying to put the genie back in the bottle, Scream Factory rushed out an official announcement. The rush to get ahead of the leak lead to an unfortunate decision to use the back cover text from the film's 2005 unrated DVD as placeholder text on the item page, and the unrated DVD's outdated verbiage of a "never before seen version of the film" caused a brief but quickly snuffed out frenzy of hope that the boutique label had somehow managed to rescue Wes Craven's long-lost original cut of the film, with even Bloody Disgusting publishing a news article about it before Scream Factory clarified and apologized for the confusion.
For those unfamiliar with the cursed production behind the aptly-named Craven film, Cursed was notoriously meddled with by the Weinsteins, who demanded rewrite after rewrite and reshoot after reshoot, which kept the film in production for about two years, to the point that the bulk of its running time consists of studio-mandated reshoots that Craven was far from happy with, and several former-stars are either barely in the finished film at all (Shannon Elizabeth), or cut from it entirely or replaced by other actors (Skeet Ulrich, among others). The endless reshoots and recuts also resulted in Rick Baker's practical werewolf effects being almost entirely cut from the film, mostly replaced by some very, very bad CGI. Baker and editor Patrick Lussier have both gone on the record over the years saying that the footage for the very different film that Craven intended to make actually does exist, making fans hope for an eventual release, but whether there is a legal roadblock, a limitation in the surviving source elements, or simply that the footage does not exist in a finished-enough state and Wes Craven is no longer with us to spearhead a director's cut re-edit, Scream Factory halted the fan frenzy they accidentally started with their rushed item description, and clarified that their blu-ray will not include any mythical long-lost director's cut, just the studio's unrated version we already know from DVD. To say that it was a messy release announcement would be an understatement: it would appear that the legacy of Cursed as a troubled film in every stage of its production and release continues. But despite that whole mess, this is still a very, very cool announcement which is actually a massive game-changer for the label, and for the state of 90s and 2000s genre film in general.
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| Courtesy: Scream Factory |
The big story here isn't necessarily that Scream Factory is releasing a collector's edition of Cursed; it's that they're releasing a collector's edition of a Miramax/Dimension title, period. Miramax/Dimension produced and released an absolute ton of films of all genres which are either modern classics or cult favorites, including a lot of the most memorable genre films of the 90s and early-2000s, and most of them have been notoriously neglected during the blu-ray era. The blu-ray format came around when Miramax/Dimension was going bankrupt, and so they never really released blu-rays as a studio themselves. Most Miramax/Dimension titles hit blu for the first time when the cash-strapped studio licensed their library to bargain-bin distributor Echo Bridge, and those discs - in keeping with Echo Bridge's low price point and literal bargain-bin marketing strategy - were decent at best (or to be a bit more charitable, pretty good for their price point), and problematic at worst (films like Halloween H20 and Supercop coming out in the wrong aspect ratio, or films like The Crow having bad transfers tarnished by excessive DNR and sloppy color timing). Things didn't get any better when Echo Bridge's license on the catalog expired and Lionsgate took over; Lionsgate tends to be very apathetic towards catalog genre titles (especially ones they didn't produce themselves), and rather than giving the Miramax/Dimension films any upgrades, they were mostly content to just recycle the exact same discs and transfers, except with their own logo in place of Echo Bridge's. And despite their apathy towards the films, Lionsgate's strict policy of almost never licensing to third-party distributors meant that the films were effectively locked away where boutique labels that would show them a bit more love and care couldn't get to them, relegated to increasingly old and dated blu-rays with no hope of an upgrade in sight. Paramount buying the Miramax/Dimension catalog last year was a major step in the right direction, as they immediately showed a bit more love for the long-neglected films in the library by producing a gorgeous 4k restoration of Scream, and announcing another 4k restoration for From Dusk Til Dawn. But for as great as the transfer was, the lackluster extras on Paramount's Scream disc hammered home how nobody does special edition blu-rays of genre films nearly as well as the boutique labels, and so the biggest hope of many fans had been that Paramount, who is increasingly less strict when it comes to third-party licensing, might cut deals for companies like Scream Factory and Arrow to release some of the Miramax/Dimension films.Scream Factory announcing this collector's edition of Cursed is the first time that a Miramax/Dimension film has gotten such a boutique release, outside of a few odd special cases like Halloween 6, H20, and Resurrection being included in their Halloween complete series set. A film like Cursed - a lesser Miramax/Dimension title, and a lesser film in the Wes Craven canon, without a doubt - getting its own standalone release is a sign that the tides have turned when it comes to the distribution of films from that catalog. Clearly Paramount has worked out some kind of deal with Scream Factory to produce collector's editions of Miramax/Dimension films, and clearly that deal is unlikely to be a simple one-off for Cursed. We have no way of knowing what their deal entails, and how many films might be part of it, but this clearly is not just about Cursed getting a new blu-ray, but what we can only assume is the first Scream Factory release of a Miramax/Dimension title, with more to come. It is understandable that the number of people who are really excited about a boutique edition of one of the least-liked Wes Craven films might be limited, but a label like Scream Factory having access to this catalog is something to get very excited about, as it opens the door to all sorts of possibilities. The recent UHD of Scream clearly shows that Paramount will want to keep some of the big Miramax/Dimension titles in-house, but that library includes a load of great genre films, and Scream Factory getting around to any of them would be very exciting. A long-overdue new restoration of The Crow, perhaps? Maybe the sort of loving special edition that The Faculty has always deserved, but has never gotten? Maybe a proper director's cut release of Hellraiser IV: Bloodline to replace the workprint-composite bootleg that's been floating around for years? Or maybe Shout! Select upgrades of the many Jackie Chan films that have been neglected on blu-ray in America (Operation Condor, Supercop, Project A, etc)? All of these would be dreams come true.
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| Courtesy: Scream Factory, Miramax/Dimension |
However, as unlikely and inauspicious as Cursed may seem for Scream/Shout Factory's first foray into the Miramax/Dimension catalog, I'm going to make the argument: it is a much better, or at least much more fun, movie than you have heard, or than you remember, and it deserves the sort of reappraisal that a Scream Factory Collector's Edition might bring. Yes, it had a very messy and troubled production, and yes, it has some famously awful CGI, but there is a lot to like about Cursed. For starters, it is remarkably cohesive considering how many reshoots and rewrites it went through, and you can rarely tell what a troubled film it was from the final product. It has a very fun and effective mix of horror and humor that certainly isn't as brilliant as Scream or The Faculty, but also isn't as far behind as its detractors say. The whodunnit (or rather, who's-the-werewolf) plot moves along with very fun and sometimes genuinely surprising twists and turns, and it does some genuinely pretty unique things with the werewolf mythos. It also is bolstered by a great cast: Christina Ricci is reliably very good as the lead, but Jesse Eisenberg and Judy Greer steal every scene that they are in, with different flavors of snarky comic relief. Eisenberg, as the teenager who is seriously freaking out about suddenly being a werewolf, is probably the most fun part of the film, particularly in his genuinely very funny frenemy dynamic with Milo Ventimiglia (supposedly the only subplot from Wes Craven's original version of the film that survived unscathed - and as an aside, that subplot is even more compelling now that Kevin Williamson is out of the closet and speaks more often about queerness in his horror films). And as you could say about an unfortunate amount of her live-action career (she is at the top of my list of actresses who really deserve better than how Hollywood has treated them), Judy Greer does great comic work with a pretty thankless and two-dimensional bitchy-coworker role, showing off the same great timing and delivery that made her a star on Archer, even when the script underutilizes her. I watched Cursed for the first time during the pandemic, expecting an absolutely terrible film thanks to its bad reputation, and was pleasantly surprised by how much fun I had with it. At minimum it is easily better than Scream 3, and worlds better than the one and only Wes Craven film that I genuinely hated, the wretched My Soul to Take. Yes, it has horrifically bad CGI, but if you try to look past it, there is a lot to love about this movie, and I hope that people realize it now that this new edition is coming out.
So I for one am very excited about Scream Factory's blu-ray, for several reasons. I am honestly very happy that this film is finally getting some love, and I'm really hoping that they give us some great extras about its famously messy production. And I am beyond excited that Scream Factory has finally gotten some kind of access to the Miramax/Dimension library. Whether you're excited about Cursed or not, that is great news. I can't wait to see what title they get to next.
- Christopher S. Jordan
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