When people think of the ultimate movie to sum up the dark layer of jealousy and obsession that exists just inches beneath the glossy, starry-eyed veneer that coats Hollywood, they usually say Sunset Boulevard. But for this reviewer’s money, the picture business is best defined by Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful. Writer/producer Phil Herman and his co-writers and all the directors — Derek Braasch, Will Devokees, Marcelo Fabani, James Panetta, and Nina Trader — echo this classic with the horror anthology, The Actor’s Curse: A Tale of Twisted Fate, which takes that unscrupulous tale and couples it with Cellar Dweller.
Clark Griffith (Joe DeBartolo) is a has-been actor who resents the people he believes led to his downfall. He stumbles across a leather-bound journal and writes all of his industry war stories in it. The journal brings Clark’s mad scribblings to life in macabre fashion. Functioning as this picture’s Alistair Cooke, Clark is our guide through four vignettes in this kind of murder-piece theatre, as each tale shows the depths of depravity and betrayal the above-the-line powers wield over those beneath them. We catch a director with his hands in the cookie jar, a producer pushing too hard for the last time, a washed-up writer selling his soul to get ahead , and an artist of shifting faces will show their true colors. We watch as lustful deviants, corrupt gatekeepers, psychotic make-up artists, and down-on-their-luck screenwriters will beg, steal, cheat, and borrow. Actually, since this is a Phil Herman picture, the characters murder in strange and interesting ways to get their lives back on track and their dreams back to that ever-alluring silver screen.
“The journal brings Clark’s mad scribblings to life in macabre fashion.”
The Actor’s Curse: A Tale of Twisted Fate is a radical, daring, and intriguing departure for Herman. But he wisely lets the various directors add their own stylish stamp to the proceedings, while ensuring each segment feels like a part of the cohesive while. The cast of Herman’s regular ensemble players, including a special appearance by Jon Provost, all get the material and help generate fear when needed. Every story reinforces, as our narrator puts it, that Tinseltown should have a warning sign attached: ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Phil Herman brings his raw tenacity, collective expertise, and a talented array of artists together in a collaborative collection of blood-soaked stories. The tales are as much about what we humans are prepared to risk for our dreams as about the toll we may have to pay. That is the essence of The Actor’s Curse: A Tale of Twisted Fate, for an actor must live out a twisted tale on the road toward an unknowable fate. And how high you fly in the movie business isn’t always up to you!
"…radical, daring, and intriguing..."
