ShortHand: Cursed Films

**Hannah Maguire** (0:13)
Hello, hello, hi, everybody. This is another topic of which I am deeply fascinated.
As a shithouse horror movie fan that I am, who refuses to watch any good films, has watched every single fucking terrible B-side horror movie ever made, if you are like me, this is right up your alley. And if you're not like me, but you like curse things, this is still right up your alley.

**Suruthi Bala** (0:41)
I have to make a confession. Uh-huh. I absolutely, unreservedly hate the word movie.

**Hannah Maguire** (0:49)
Oh.

**Suruthi Bala** (0:49)
I can't stand it.

**Hannah Maguire** (0:50)
I never knew this about you.

**Suruthi Bala** (0:52)
I prefer to say film.

**Hannah Maguire** (0:53)
Is it one of your things of like how you hate it because it's like a lazy English word? Because it's like a movie. Yes.

**Suruthi Bala** (0:58)
It's like a talkie, and then the movie. It's like, come on. Like, let's confront what it is, you know?

**Hannah Maguire** (1:03)
But then is film not just as bad because it's like, oh, it's literally what it's on?

**Suruthi Bala** (1:07)
I just prefer it.

**Hannah Maguire** (1:08)
Fine.

**Suruthi Bala** (1:09)
So you can say movies throughout this. I chant.

**Hannah Maguire** (1:12)
Do you know what? That's great because then we don't even have to try and use the thesaurus.

**Suruthi Bala** (1:18)
In this country, it's fairly reasonable, especially in the North, to be like, oh, should we go to the pictures? Never say that in front of an American because they will laugh you down the road.

**Hannah Maguire** (1:27)
What do they say?

**Suruthi Bala** (1:28)
The movies.

**Hannah Maguire** (1:28)
Oh, they say the movies.

**Suruthi Bala** (1:29)
Yeah, and I was like, oh, should we go to the pictures? And my friend was like, okay, Elizabeth Taylor.

**Hannah Maguire** (1:36)
Yeah, I guess like down here, we don't really say pictures, but if somebody said it to me, I wouldn't be like, it wouldn't land weird on my ear. I almost think it's like quite a more old fashioned way to say, should we go to the cinema? I'd say go to the cinema.

**Suruthi Bala** (1:47)
I would say go to the cinema. I think my mom says the pictures.

**Hannah Maguire** (1:50)
Yeah, I would say cinema.

**Suruthi Bala** (1:51)
I probably said it when I was a child, that's because my mom says it. Anyway, now we've got that on.

**Hannah Maguire** (1:57)
I'm so glad we spent so long writing really tight, succinct intros for these episodes.

**Suruthi Bala** (2:03)
So now I'm just gonna get inundated with Instagram voice notes of people saying the word movie. Anyway, if RedHanded is testament to anything, it's that people love a sinister story.
People have loved swapping grim tales since time immemorial, and it's the reason that we both have jobs.
And almost as soon as we started to make films, we started to make horror films. But what happens when the terror isn't just on screen? Film law is full of stories of bizarre accidents, shocking coincidences, and even murders, all of which give rise to urban legends and bloodthirsty cult followings. And these sinister associations are no bad thing for filmmakers. It's like when the FBI wrote that letter to NWA first straight out of Compton, and Dre was like, thank you so much. You've just sold millions more records. Myths about films being cursed can build hysteria around upcoming releases, inevitably getting bums on seats. So we're going to take you through some of the most famous examples of films that were plagued by disaster, causing many to believe that they were truly cursed. And we're going to ask the question, were these creepy events a result of real curses, coincidence, or was it just really good PR? Here is the shorthand.

**Hannah Maguire** (3:19)
So we begin our cursed footage through horror history, with possibly the most famous cursed film of them all, William Friedkin's The Exorcist. And what makes The Exorcist so infamous? Well, because literally everything that you could possibly imagine going wrong in the production of a film went wrong and then some. In fact, the shit that went down during the making of this masterpiece is arguably more unbelievable and terrifying than the film itself.
Like how, as soon as filming began, a bird flew into a circuit box and started a fire, that burned down almost the entire set of the house's interiors. But strangely, the only part of the set that was untouched by this fire was the bedroom, the one used for filming the exorcism scenes.
Now, this madness was enough to spook the makers of the film into hiring an actual Jesuit priest to bless the set, in the hope of preventing any further otherworldly chaos.