The title delivers on its promise - unfortunately. Women screaming their butts off is not why I watch horror films, it's IN SPITE OF IT that I watch them.
The beautiful Stephanie Beacham (Catherine) doesn't have to wait long until she gets to starts screaming. She screams, gets attacked by a "crawling hand", then screams again, then gets attacked by a mutt, screams some more, then falls down a flight of stairs, screams again, then her scream becomes laughter (gets hysterical), and then she loses her mind (sort of). What astoundingly resilient fetuses those demonic unborns make! You simply can't prevent a red-marked Gorbachev from being born, you simply can't. If there is any message in ANTSS, it's that one.
One question: why does Gorbachev Sr put a curse on Lom's descendants instead of on Lom himself? Lom rapes his virgin wife on their honeymoon, so I'd sort of expect that Lom gets the brunt of the curse, not some distant-in-the-future relatives. That's like someone hitting you in the face and you taking revenge by hitting the chair on which the guy who smacked you used to sit. (OK, perhaps not an ideal analogy.) Lom was presented as a debaucherous, immoral, hedonistic rapist, so why would he care if his descendants got cursed? Gorbachev: "Your children and your children's children will be cursed!" Lom: "Oh, yeah? Big deal. Better them than me. Cheerio!" I must admit that this whole curse business confounds me somewhat, because more often than not the curses (in these movies) fail to punish the perpetrator. To the movie's defense, the 5th Commandment wraps up the movie in the final scene. "Thou shalt have thine 3rd and 4th generation offspring cursed" or something like that. Not that the Great Book makes much more sense than ANTSS's script. Why the all-Just all-Forgiving all-Merciful God would punish those innocent of a crime is beyond me. Not to mention the strange decision/rule to make the curse run its course after the 4th generation. The 5th generations can relax, no more need for panic.
Additionally, by cursing the future generations of a man, you are also cursing the spouses of the cursed, i.e. men and women who are NOT part of that genetic line. So what really happens is that for every additional generation that you curse, each curse gets "watered down", for want of a better term. In the 2nd generation it is 50% effective, 50% targets the innocent. In the 3rd generation it is 25% effective etc. Hence perhaps why God decided to limit all curses to the 4th generation. "Alright, alright, the curse loses its percentage value drastically with every passing generation, so I'll let you off the hook after the 4th generation." Hallelujah!
The beautiful Stephanie Beacham (Catherine) doesn't have to wait long until she gets to starts screaming. She screams, gets attacked by a "crawling hand", then screams again, then gets attacked by a mutt, screams some more, then falls down a flight of stairs, screams again, then her scream becomes laughter (gets hysterical), and then she loses her mind (sort of). What astoundingly resilient fetuses those demonic unborns make! You simply can't prevent a red-marked Gorbachev from being born, you simply can't. If there is any message in ANTSS, it's that one.
One question: why does Gorbachev Sr put a curse on Lom's descendants instead of on Lom himself? Lom rapes his virgin wife on their honeymoon, so I'd sort of expect that Lom gets the brunt of the curse, not some distant-in-the-future relatives. That's like someone hitting you in the face and you taking revenge by hitting the chair on which the guy who smacked you used to sit. (OK, perhaps not an ideal analogy.) Lom was presented as a debaucherous, immoral, hedonistic rapist, so why would he care if his descendants got cursed? Gorbachev: "Your children and your children's children will be cursed!" Lom: "Oh, yeah? Big deal. Better them than me. Cheerio!" I must admit that this whole curse business confounds me somewhat, because more often than not the curses (in these movies) fail to punish the perpetrator. To the movie's defense, the 5th Commandment wraps up the movie in the final scene. "Thou shalt have thine 3rd and 4th generation offspring cursed" or something like that. Not that the Great Book makes much more sense than ANTSS's script. Why the all-Just all-Forgiving all-Merciful God would punish those innocent of a crime is beyond me. Not to mention the strange decision/rule to make the curse run its course after the 4th generation. The 5th generations can relax, no more need for panic.
Additionally, by cursing the future generations of a man, you are also cursing the spouses of the cursed, i.e. men and women who are NOT part of that genetic line. So what really happens is that for every additional generation that you curse, each curse gets "watered down", for want of a better term. In the 2nd generation it is 50% effective, 50% targets the innocent. In the 3rd generation it is 25% effective etc. Hence perhaps why God decided to limit all curses to the 4th generation. "Alright, alright, the curse loses its percentage value drastically with every passing generation, so I'll let you off the hook after the 4th generation." Hallelujah!