The 1980s Horror Adaptation With A Star Trek Icon, Stream Without Netflix
After Star Trek: The Next Generation co-star Wil Wheaton had his breakout role in the 1986 sleeper hit Stand by Me, the doors began to open for the young actor. His portrayal as Wesley Crusher led to numerous film roles and eventually led to a lucrative career as a voice actor. But the same year that Trekkies saw Wesley Crusher for the first time, horror fans got a look at Wheaton in the 1987 cult horror film The Curse, an overlooked b-movie that is streaming for free.
The Family
The Curse movie is the story of a rural Tennessee farm that is plagued by an alien contamination following the crash of a meteorite.
The farm family in the movie is a blended one, with the patriarch Nathan Crane (Claude Akins) and his son Cyrus (Malcom Danare) paired with Nathan’s spouse Frances (Kathleen Jordan Gregory) and her children Zack (Wil Wheaton) and Alice (Amy Wheaton).
Nathan Crane is a salt-of-the-Earth type, whose strong work ethic is only matched by his religious zealotry.
The Meteorite
One night, Frances sneaks off to have a roll in the hay with farmhand Mike (Steve Davis) when the two are interrupted by a meteorite crashing nearby. The green liquid oozing out of the sphere concerns local doctor Alan Forbes (Cooper Huckabee), who doesn’t like the fact that the groundwater on the farm could be contaminated.
His worries are put off by a local realtor named Charlie Davidson (Steve Carlisle), whose main concern is keeping the Tennessee Valley Authority committed to constructing a nearby reservoir, a project that might be taken off the table if Dr. Forbes makes a fuss.
The Infection
The Curse begins to show the ill effects of what the meteorite crash does to anyone, man or beast, who consumes the farm’s water supply. The movie shows produce growing monstrously large, but rancid. The livestock begin acting strangely and even begin to attack the Crane family and their farm workers.
Battle Against The Mutated
Zack heeded the warnings from Dr. Forbes from the beginning and refrained from drinking water from his family’s farm and also succeeded in keeping his sister from doing so. But his mother had consumed copious amounts of it and became mad with an illness that soon transformed her beauty into other worldly hideousness.
As The Curse movie continues, Zack is aided by a representative of the Tennessee Valley Authority (John Schneider) in a battle to keep the mutated and murderous farm residents at bay until they can find answers.
Stream It Now
GFR SCORE
The Curse is loosely based on the H.P. Lovecraft story “The Colour Out of Space.” The film adaptation of the horror icon’s writing might not do the story itself justice, but it does carry viewers over an interesting story arc with very few bumps along the way.
The movie’s special effects are on point, the acting a bit above mediocre, and the cult following it received after bombing at the box office was enough to generate a series of sequels.
The Curse can be viewed on the movie streaming service Tubi for free.
