Using this title because – like others realized before me – the original one, It!, was kinda ass and so generic, that even before you could have people confused with the 1990 adaptation of Stephen King’s story, you could have it confused for It! The Terror From Beyond Space from 1958.
No one was gonna confuse the film with 1989’s Soviet satyrical comedy history drama by Sergei Ovcharov, Ono, which also translated to “It”, but then again this is is why it’s better you check before giving your movie a stupid ass and generic title that the marketing tried to spin as a thing necessary to putt butts in seats or some crap like that.
I’d suggest you don’t call your new horror film IT, but nobody would anymore, unless for the inevitable remake of Pennywise story in a couple of decades.
Thankfully for the coulrophobics, Curse Of The Golem (also called Anger Of The Golem for some extra confusion) isn’t about clown or clown-shaped entities, it’s about a very classic monster that was also adapted for cinemas (and even had a series of sorts) well before Frankenstein (which also arguably inspired), the Golem from Jewish folklore.
And while i feel it’s famous enough that i don’t need to explain what a golem is… long story short, it’s a humanoid automaton sculpted from clay or mud and animated via a magic, and while there are many variations of the myth, the classic version has the golem created by Judah Loew, a rabbi in 16th centhury Prague, using clay and put into the golem’s mouth a slip of paper with the name of God written into it, to give the statue life and so it could defend the other Jews of the Prague ghetto from persecution or straight up pogroms.
This is relevant to this film plot because the golem is indeed the same one created by Rabbi Lowe in 16th centhury Prague, and found as the only thing surviving a devastating fire of a London’s museum warehouse, which immediatly kills the old museum curator, in a way that the assistant curator, Arthur Pimm, feels something is off about that weird statue, and then realizes it’s indeed the golem of the legend, locates the hidden sacred scroll and use the golem to kill off a rival, hoping it would lead to him becoming the actual curator in charge of the museum.
And also to help hide him robbing displays of ancient jewerly, as he wants to gift them to his mother, or her mummified corpse he keeps around the house, while he also wants the attention of Ellen, the daughter of the first curator, as Pimm loves her but isn’t reciprocated.
Eventually the killings and strange events caused by Pimm ordering the Golem around catch the attention of the police, alongside the American museum curator visiting in order to see if they could acquire the statue..
It’s an attempt to modernize the myth of the golem, especially looking at the famous 1920 film The Golem, but even if the budget was higher and able to afford scenes of proper destruction (like the London Bridge getting lifted and torn off by the Golem)…. the plot wouldn’t have made much sense anyway, as it feel they crammed three scripts into one, making for a huge fuckin mess and its elements just throw on the frying pan in a sort of dog’s breakfast combo meal.
For example, Arthur Pimm being budget-Norman Bates from Psycho doesn’t amount to anything, heck, it’s not even played as a surprise, as the movie reveals almost immediatly that mother dearest is indeed the mummified corpse sat on a rocking chair you’d expect to… and it doesn’t go nowhere.
At times it feels like a creature feature, almost like a 40s b-movie that swaps the mad scientist and a gorilla-man servant with a curator and the Golem, but it’s not that either, as even when technically transgressing its rules because of it being used for evil, it doesn’t really rampage around and there’s no reason even for Pimm to want that… but then again there’s no reason for Pimm to have it follow him around the city to break the London Bridge (allegedly to impress the love interest), or do something similar despite being seen with that thing moving and being reported on for that.
Before i rip a bit more into the utter nonsense of the script, i will say that the golem costume isn’t too bad, at all, though it looks like it’s made of wood, despite the film insisting it’s made of stone, it sure doesn’t look like that, and the design isn’t too bad either, even though i’m not sure it was made to be a consequence of the fire or not, i doubt anyone even considered that as an explanation for why he doesn’t look like the one from the 1920’s The Golem, though it might simply be because they thought that design was too old fashioned.
Regardless, i feel that no one re-read the script or simply nobody cared to, because there is so much shit that happens for no reason, and which i will question despite knowing i’m yelling at the void.
Why the golem (still inactive) kills the museum curator in the beginning?
why Roddy somehow tries to kill the golem via methods he already know won’t work?
Then again, why even ask the golem to swallow the sacred paper in its mouth?
As a final cherry, the third act also feels like a different film all together, as somehow the police officer managed to convince others offscreen of the golem being actually alive, have Pimm internated, call upon the Golem to break him free, capture Ellen, hide out in a castle, with the military dedicing its worth using “a small warhead” on the place to try kill the thing.
Which doesn’t work, and the Golem decides to piss off and retreat into the sea, like it’s fucking Godzilla…. or a smaller Daimajin, which is fitting as the golem myth (and specifically a 1936 Czech-Slovakian film called Le Golem) itself influenced the Daimajin films.
I guess Gorgo being released just 6 years earlier still lingered in the UK collective memory.
It was surely something crammed into the guise of a 93 minutes movie.
Curse Of The Golem is an exquisite cornucopia of non-sequiturs, so much that even having Roddy McDowall in the lead playing a mad curator that moonlights as “Borman Nates” doesn’t mean shit, as his character never comes together, nor does any application of logic, as people do random shit for mere plot convenience, or manage the impossible off-screen because the script says so.
Modernizing the golem myth for late 60s/70s sensibilites is an interesting proposition, but since there is no focus and the script… is all over the fuckin place, as is the “pacing”, it comes off as uneven at best, confused and lacking any consistent vision, obviously done on the cheap (the wood-stone golem costume is sadly indicative of the budget being strangled), despite at times being somewhat competent and letting you glimpse a better movie if the narrative stuck to one thing,
To be honest, i’m fascinated, in awe of the utter mess of this subpar at best thing, with Roddy McDowell performance being somehow captivating as he tries despite the senseless bullshit he’s made to say and do by the script (acting is overall okay, better than you might expect).
Curse Of The Golem might be… well, i’d say IS mostly forgotten even by genre aficionados nowadays, but it’s worth noting it was widely distributed in US territories alongside another Herbert J. Leder directed film, 1966’s Frozen Scream, one of the British made “video nasties”, the one about the freezer Nazis dresses as the cultist from Monolith’s Blood.
crudux cruo!
