In 1947 a driver with his little daughter die in a fiery car crash caused by avoiding a white rabbit. For no sinister reason ever revealed to the viewer, the daughter becomes an evil ghost in Cathy's Curse (1977).

This no-budget French Canadian production has been available in a number of packagings over the years but I couldn't help but reproduce the least appropriate dvd box showing a goth dominatrix. This image has nothing whatsoever to do with the film & must have annoyed the bejabbers out of a lot of people who bought or rented it hoping for softcore instead of family horror.

In 1977, a mother, father, & their daughter Cathy (Randi Allen) move into the haunted house. Cathy is immediately the target of a murderous spirit.

In a story inspired by but not slavishly imitative of The Exorcist (1973) & The Omen (1976), evil doings include inducing the housekeeper-nanny (Dorothy Davis) to jump from a window to her death, & wicked threats against the neighborhood psychic Agatha (Mary Morter), & sundry telekinetic events which Dad manages never to notice.

Vivian the mother (Beverly Murray), recovering from a nervous breakdown, is still very angry at the world, & doesn't handle the haunting all that well, though she rises to the occasion by the end. Father (Alan Scarfe) is an oblivious fool throughout; he never does get his act together, blaming everything on his wife's mental illness.

The film has a standard-issue spooky attic with junk strewn about, explored by Cathy who finds an appalling doll which is the vessel of the nasty little girl ghost which haunts & possesses Cathy.

Mom is sometimes wonderfully loopy & the threat to the child is fairly convincing. Mom is by turns scared to death of her dangerous daughter, & bold enough to try to save the girl. When Mom tries to destroy the evil doll & liberate her daughter, she is set upon by a furious Cathy. It all builds to a fairly easy but not entirely dissatisfying conclusion, delivering few punches & no surprises, yet fairly entertaining.

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