It's been revealed that Shudder's popular docies, Cursed Films, will return on April 7th. The series focuses on movies that are rumored to be "cursed", whether it be through incredibly troubled productions, on-set accidents, or mysterious afflictions that seemed to plague the cast and crew even after filming had concluded.
The new season, which will stream on both Shudder and AMC+, gives an in-depth look into five more films, adding to the previous entries investigated by season 1, which included Twilight Zone: The Movie, The Omen, The Exorcist, The Crow, and Poltergeist.
Cannibal Holocaust (1980)
Cannibal Holocaust is a notorious Italian horror film that has been the source of debate and controversy for decades. Filmed in the found-footage style, the movie purports to be the discovered film reels of a group of missing documentarians who had entered the Amazon to chronicle the lives of cannibalistic tribes.
Because of its poor film quality and surprisingly realistic gore and SFX, many viewers thought Cannibal Holocaust was a "snuff film" and believed they were actually witnessing real murders. It got so intense that the director, Ruggero Deodato, was even charged with murder in Italy, per GameRant.
The troubles didn't end there. A few years later it was revealed that, though no human was harmed during the filming of Cannibal Holocaust, all the animal deaths were real. And in more recent years, allegations of cultural appropriation and manipulation of indigenous people (who were used to play the "cannibals" in the film) have come to the forefront. Though seen as a masterpiece by some, Cannibal Holocaust is continually haunted by its unrelenting reputation.
Stalker (1979)
Stalker was a 1979 Soviet film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. In the movie, a guide known as "The Stalker" leads two men through "The Zone", a mysterious and closed-off space believed to be filled with supernatural events. Their goal is to find "The Room," which is said to give men their deepest desires.
Tarkovsky later developed a rare type of lung cancer that would take his life at the young age of 54. Some claim that this cancer was caused by the filming of Stalker, which filmed many of its scenes in a hydroelectric plant that was downstream from a chemical factory that was dumping pollutants into the river on a daily basis, as reported by The Guardian.
There are contrary theories, however, that posit that the KGB poisoned Tarkovsky, according to IndieWire. He was adamantly against the Soviet dictatorship and eventually fled the country to seek refuge in Western Europe. Furthermore, some film scholars claim that Stalker was about the bleakness of life in the Soviet Union and that "the Zone" was a representation of the Gulag (Russia's forced-labor camps for political prisoners and dissidents). Sadly, either way, it seems that Stalker had something to do with Tarkovsky's early death.
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Many audiences probably don't see The Wizard of Oz as a "cursed film", but the movie had a tormented and disastrous production. Numerous actors playing the flying monkeys were injured when their wires would snap during the middle of a scene, and according to Time, The Wicked Witch's and the Tin Man's makeup contained chemicals that slowly poisoned them (the original Tin Man actor, Buddy Ebsen, even had to be re-cast because the aluminum dust in his silver makeup poisoned him so severely).
Adding to that is the legacy of Judy Garland. Her time at MGM and her work on The Wizard of Oz was filled with abuse. Reported by Biography, Garland, at just 17, was put on a strict diet to remain thin, was given drugs (like barbiturates and amphetamines) to "remain energetic on-set", was harassed by her castmates, and some allegations published in The Guardian even say that she was sexually assaulted. If nothing else, The Wizard of Oz was certainly a curse to Garland, one that would follow her for the rest of her life.
The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)
The Serpent and the Rainbow is based on a true story about a Harvard researcher who went to Haiti in search of new medicinal ingredients... but ended up getting engrossed in the world of voodoo and superstition. Wes Craven decided to adapt the story into a film starring Bill Pullman and chose to film on-location in Haiti. How the following events in Haiti unfolded remains a mystery. It could have been mass hysteria, the product of Haiti's poverty and political oppression, heat, and dehydration... or voodoo.
The cast and crew got involved in voodoo in order to learn for the film. According to We Minored In Film, Craven witnessed practitioners eating glass and hot coals, and one of the writers ended up having a mental health crisis, being found in his hotel room wearing nothing but a shirt while rambling and suffering from psychosis.
The locals were also constantly threatening the cast and crew, demanding more money. Almost everyone involved in the film became ill and per The Serpent and the Rainbow is considered one of Craven's best and has gained more recognition throughout the years.
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Roman Polanski's hit film Rosemary's Baby set the world ablaze when it was released. The movie centered around a woman who was raped and impregnated with the spawn of Satan. For 1968, this was incredibly shocking and incendiary, causing massive amounts of praise and backlash. But behind the scenes, there was even more chaos.
Vanity Fair reports that the cast and crew received death threats after the movie, causing producer William Castle to become so stressed that he developed chronic kidney stones. At one point, his pain got so bad that he began hallucinating scenes from Rosemary's Baby. Krystof Komeda, who did the film's score, died in a tragic accident not long after the movie's premiere, and the fate of Polanski and his wife, Sharon Tate, is a story that continues to live in notoriety and tragedy to this day.
Tate apparently almost starred in the film, losing out to Mia Farrow, but reports state that she was often seen on set and even became interested in the occult. In 1969, while pregnant with Polanski's child, Tate was murdered by the Manson Family. Years later, John Lennon was assassinated in front of his Manhattan apartment building, The Dakota, the same building used as the setting for Rosemary's Baby. The movie is considered by some as the most cursed film ever made.