Perhaps the most famous “cursed” movie of all time, the original 1982 Poltergeist, about a suburban family terrorized by a supernatural presence, climaxed with a scene in which the mom (JoBeth Williams) is dragged into a partially dug-out pool and is surrounded by skeletons – the reveal being that the housing development in which they live was unscrupulously built on top of a graveyard. The Manson Family connection and the fact that people still believe in the existence of snuff films even today and really sell this one.
This kickstarted an obsession with snuff films, although none have ever been conclusively unearthed. Grindhouse film distributor Allan Shackleton bought the film, changed the title to Snuff, and released it under the pretense that it depicted the real murder of the main actress (the tagline was “Filmed in South America…Where Life is Cheap!”). Then, just a few years later in 1976, husband-and-wife directors Michael and Roberta Findlay made a cheap exploitation film called Slaughter about an actress and her director who are murdered by a Manson Family-esque clan in South America. The concept of a “snuff” film – a movie depicting an actual murder – basically started in 1971 when Ed Sanders, the author of a book about the Manson Family, asserted that Charles Manson and his followers had filmed their killing spree (no footage was ever found). Some eager horror buffs even tried to track the “original” Antrum down, believing it to be real.Īntrum is a nice try, but in the age of advanced search engines, it’s hard to fully convince people that a film with a supposed body count of 60 could truly have been “lost.” The fact that Antrum’s release was preceded by rumors and word of mouth among hardcore horror fans (much like the way the controversial 2011 A Serbian Film grew a reputation well before it was ever screened publicly) lent the movie an air of real mystery. The filmmakers do their best to make the movie-within-a-movie look authentically ’70s to help sell the whole façade.
The movie opens with an 8-minute documentary detailing the curse around the film, then shows you the “film” itself, which is about two young kids who attempt to dig a hole to Hell to save their recently deceased dog. Antrum purports to be a documentary about a lost 1970s film that was only screened twice, because everyone who watches it dies. What better way to kick things off than with a movie that is a perfect Venn diagram of both concepts – “found footage” faux-real horror and supposedly cursed films.
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