Of course, some of your universe's critics are lukewarm about this classic. For example, reviewer JohnSeal writes that the film may be seen as "severely wanting in technical proficiency, quality of screenplay, acting, and music." Reviewer HorrorFan1984 calls the film "a very skippable late 80's movie in the horror genre." And reviewer metalrage666 writes, "there are way too many plot holes and moments of mind-numbing stupidity to make this worth watching."
Read on for a more nuanced appreciation of 1989's Curfew...
The film begins in a dreamlike manner, with a young couple in a brightly lit kitchen cutting a cake, only to be interrupted by a young man with the hairstyle of a juvenile delinquent. The newcomer is Ray, and he spins a bottle, pushing the other young man, Bob, outside so he can make out with the young woman. Then Bob breaks down the door with a hatchet, screams “Ray!” and then attacks Ray.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the dreamlike opening sequence was in fact a dream/memory. Bob wakes up in an extremely roomy prison cell. He says nothing to his cellmate (who happens to be Ray and also happens to be his brother), instead simply walking to the bars pensively as credits begin to roll.
The film itself begins at a big house (perhaps the filmmakers intended a humorous cut, as the film cuts from “the big house” to a big house). A teenage girl leaves the front door with her backpack while back in the house her parents watch her from an upstairs bedroom. They helpfully indicate that they are leaving for a three-day vacation and they are worried about leaving their daughter alone (with a babysitter, however) due to her recent rebellious behavior. “It’s just a phase,” the mother says.
“Mmmm, it’s not a phase, Megan,” replies the father. “It’s high school.”
As her parents watch, the teenager, played by Kyle Richards, changes into high heels and a tight skirt.
Elsewhere, Bob and Ray, now free of prison, kill two men constructing a barbed wire fence in order to obtain their clothing. The murderers leave the men in a state of rather embarrassing undress.
Meanwhile, Ms. Richards strolls past the house of a judge and his wife. The judge scolds her for wearing a short (knee-length) skirt: “Your father is a very important man in this community. I hope you remember that the next time you get dressed.”
Ms. Richards reaches the Pink Cafe (next to the Pink Motel), the site of her date tonight. She and her friend Monica put makeup on in the cafe’s bathroom, happy they are dating football players named Johnny and Pete. Unfortunately for all concerned, Johnny and Pete are a bit wild. They spill a salad at the cafe, so they are chased off by the short order cook and the town deputy (played, seemingly arbitrarily, by The Brady Bunch’s Christopher Knight wearing a pencil mustache). They get on their motorcycles with Ms. Richards and Monica and ride off, but they also pull a rather juvenile prank, pretending they were in a motorcycle accident to embarrass the deputy. The two couples ride away and laugh about their prank. “Monica,” says Pete, “you are a born actress. I swear to God when I heard her scream, I completely thought I was dead.”
Meanwhile, the filmmakers cleverly give the audience some backstory as Bob and Ray home-invade a house and kill the occupants, then engage in a little psychodrama to reenact Bob claiming he was innocent of the crime of killing the young woman in the opening dream sequence.
Back at the scene of the date, Ms. Richards reveals that she is a good girl, refusing to drink or have sex with Johnny, even as Monica and Pete are having sex outside on the ground. (“Oh, Pete, you’re the best!” “I know!”) She rebuffs Johnny and asks him to take her home because she promised to be home by 10:00 before her parents leave for the weekend.
Horrifically, Bob and Ray home-invade the judge’s house due to the fact that he was the judge who convicted them. In another display of their penchant for psychodrama (not to mention exposition), Bob and Ray reenact their sentencing hearings, complete with a gavel that the judge keeps in his office. They almost immediately slash the judge’s wife’s throat, to which the judge responds by getting out of his chair and yelling, “Murderer!” Then Bob kills the judge, ironically with his own gavel. “The prosecution rests,” quips Ray.
Ms. Richards returns home, but she is too late to say goodbye to her parents, who have already left. In a unique cinematic moment, she is mildly startled by a black cat the jumps from the ceiling. She picks up the cat and pours herself a wholesome glass of milk. Meanwhile, the filmmakers reveal that her babysitter, Mrs. Cox, is in the next room — Ms. Richards believes her to be asleep, but the audience sees her slightly bloody arm.
Ms. Richards enters her bedroom and is startled by Ray. However, being wholesome and resourceful, Ms. Richards breaks the glass over Ray’s head and runs away. Perhaps surprisingly, the breaking glass does not kill Ray as it would in real life. Instead, he retains consciousness and chases after Ms. Richards, followed by Bob.
She runs next door to the judge’s house but finds both neighbors have been gruesomely murdered.
Ms. Richards is lucky enough to flag down a driver, played character actor Bert Remsen. This results, perhaps surprisingly, in a car chase, as Bob and Ray drive their stolen car after Mr. Remsen’s car. Both cars spin out and Bob kills the poor man with his own cane. Ms. Richards, again showing her resourcefulness, steals Mr. Remsen’s car and the chase is on again. She drives to the Pink Cafe, where, shockingly, she is not believed when she asks the short order cook and the deputy for help. However, Ms. Richards is convincing, so they soon investigate her story.
The deputy drives her back to her house. In another shock, Ms. Richards’s mother opens the door, even though she and her husband left earlier for their three-day weekend. Although her mother acts suspiciously, the deputy does not pick up on her clues, including her expert facial expression designed to indicate that something is wrong.
The deputy drives away. Her mother pulls Ms. Richards into the house, where she sees Bob and Ray holding her parents hostage!
In the next scene, perhaps inspired by The Last House on the Left, Bob and Ray have a nice turkey dinner with Ms. Richards’s family. (I must interject that it is good to see that in your universe turkey takes only a few minutes to cook, as in my universe it takes considerably longer.) Then they retire to the living room for coffee, where Bob and Ray feign leaving the house, only to spring back through the doorway admitting they were simply joking. This earns another blow to the head for Ray — this time, Ms. Richards’s father smashes a Mr. Coffee pot against his head. Instead of dying again, Ray shrugs off the shattered coffee pot and Bob strangles her father (who happens to be the district attorney who put away either one or both brothers). Ray threatens the family with a large drill in the basement.
Instead of using Chekhov’s drill, however, Ray chooses spray paint as his weapon to torture the family, spraying it at Ms. Richards’s mother, Megan. Then he forces Ms. Richards’s father, Walter, to go upstairs and walk on broken glass in his bare feet. (The filmmakers simply show Walter screaming as he walks, an effective choice that might be more effective if the actor were a more convincing screamer.)
In the next horrific torture set piece, Ray puts a slightly excessive amount of makeup on Megan’s face. Then he shoots a mirror.
Next, Ray forces the underwear-clad mother into a bathtub, threatening to drop a plugged-in electric shaver into the water.
Meanwhile, in the basement, Bob speaks to Ms. Richards, making her an offer: “Maybe I could let you out, if you’d be with me.”
“All right. I’ll be with you.”
He opens the basement door for her. Fortunately, Walter is able to hit Bob with a lead pipe, knocking him out. Walter gets Bob’s gun and he and Ms. Richard go upstairs, searching for Megan. Ray is too smart for them, however. He points his gun at Megan’s head and forces all the prisoners back into the basement.
As the film moves into its third act, Ms. Richards’s friends arrive at her house because Johnny is still made about being rebuffed. Johnny and Monica break into the house, making the curious decision to go upstairs to the parents’ bedroom to make love, while Pete breaks in separately because he wants to eat a pie. Pete draws attention to himself by clumsily knocking over the toaster. Then he makes himself a turkey sandwich from the food on the table, mumbling, “Whoa! Touchdown!” with joy at finding so much food.
Bob and Ray, who are about to enact a firing squad on the family in the basement, hear the toaster fall upstairs. Ray kills Pete with a knife. Then he goes upstairs to find Johnny and Monica having sex in their underwear. Ray kills Johnny with the time-tested method of effortlessly twisting his head until his neck breaks. He also kills Monica offscreen with a razor.
Meanwhile, Deputy Christopher Knight finds Bert Remsen, who has not been killed after all and wanders through the streets. The deputy drives to Ms. Richards’s house, sees the wreckage wrought by the villains, and sensibly calls for backup.
In the climactic basement sequence, Ray attaches jumper cables between the fuse box and Walter’s metal chair. Ms. Richards plays Bob and Ray against each other, telling Bob she loves him. The two brothers get into a brotherly fight that results in Ray killing Bob with Chekhov’s drill at the same time as the deputy discovers everyone in the basement. Ray chases the deputy upstairs and shoots him.
Meanwhile, Ms. Richards escapes the ropes holding her to her chair and picks up Bob’s revolver. She hides, sparking a cat-and-mouse game that lasts a few seconds until she springs out and shoots Ray as he tries to electrocute her father. However, in a shocking finale, when she turns her back to free her parents, Ray reaches a gun and climbs to his feet. Instead of shooting her, he looks at her holding her gun and says misogynistically, “You go ahead. That’s what you want, isn’t it? You use us, you manipulate us, we’re standing in the rain, you humiliate us. Go ahead, do it. You killed my brother, kill me. Go ahead. Kill me.”
So she shoots him in the head.
In the coda, having revealed she is as murderous as the killers, Ms. Richards has a dream that she is picked up in a car by Bob. Then she wakes up.
The End
Among all its classic qualities, perhaps the most notable is that Curfew is exactly the kind of home invasion thriller that would be made by Gary Winick, director of 13 Going on 30 (2004), Charlotte's Web (2006), and Letters to Juliet (2010). Cleverly defying expectations set by films such as Straw Dogs (1971) and The Last House on the Left (1972), Curfew is only slightly violent, with most murders occurring offscreen and humiliation limited to a slight excess of lipstick.
Curfew is also notable for its subtlety and ambiguity, as it raises some questions that, chillingly, it never answers. For example, we see Bob and Ray in prison, and in the next scene they have escaped. Is your universe's prison system so insecure that films can depict escaped murderers without doing anything to explain how they escaped? Shocking! Additionally, Ms. Richards's parents return home after leaving for their three-day weekend, but no explanation is given for their return. Are your universe's mini-vacations so fragile that they can be ended with no explanation? Even more shocking!
Perhaps because of its humanistic approach and its ambiguities, Curfew is an excellent, effective addition to the home invasion subgenre. I have no doubt that Ms. Richards's character will always wear long pants, and never put on a knee-length skirt again.