The Curse of Shakespeare

Ever wonder why there haven't been many stage productions of William Shakespeare's Macbeth? Here is one such theory on why this is:

In 1604 Will Shakespeare in his zeal to please King James I, an authority on demonology, cast caution and imagination aside and for the opening scene of Macbeth's Act IV he reproduced a 17th century black-magic ritual, a sort of how-to to budding witches. Without changing an ingredient, Old Will provided his audience with step-by-step instructions in the furtive art of spell casting:

"Round around the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venum sleeping got.
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot"
...And so on.

The ritual's practitioners were not amused by this detailed public exposure of their witchcraft, and it is said that as punishment they cast an everlasting spell on the play, turning it into the most ill-starred of all theatrical productions. It is so unlucky that by comparison to Macbeth's nearly 400-year history of unmitigated disaster, Murphy's Law appears exceedingly optimistic.

So, what does that have to do with today's piece? This piece of information was used in making a Dario Argento movie called Opera. In the movie, while it isn't the central part of the movie, it does get touched upon for the first part of the movie. The movie begins with a rehearsal of the Macbeth play with a temperamental star getting fed up with having to share the stage with ravens. As she leaves the building, she gets run over by a car. This leads the director of the play to summon her young understudy Betty to take the role. We cut to a scene where Betty is listening to a part of the opera when she gets a mysterious phone call. It is soon that she gets worried about bad things happening surrounding Macbeth. Opening night rolls around, and the play goes off without a hitch, except that the voice becomes Betty's stalker and he rams an attendant's neck repeatedly into a coat hanger (How's that for meeting your demise?). In the midst of that, a light gets knocked off of a balcony and causes a brief interruption. The play finishes, and things are going well for Betty. Later that evening, this is where things start to go wrong, as the stalker ties up Betty and puts needles under her eyes, making her watch him murder her lover. Said stalker is wearing a brown raincoat and a hood, so no one gets to really see who it is. The same thing happens later in the movie, only this time, it is in the sewing room and the victim is the wardrobe designer. The most famous death in the movie without a question is the bullet that navigates through the door's peephole and through Betty's assistant's head.

As a whole, Opera is typical Argento, in that he creates some fairly elaborate scenes and the victims often go out in spectacular style. The movie tends to drag a bit, or at least feels that way, and the ending is tacky and unnecessary. Of all the movies that Argento released in the 1975-1987 period, this would be in the middle of the pack.