First-time feature director Jacqueline Garry debuts with a wickedly funny camp thriller, The Curse, about a 24-year-old TV d-girl whose freakish P.M.S. excesses may really be symptoms of lycanthropy. Newcomer Amy Laughlin plays the shy Frida, who, after being bit by a fellow shopper at a particularly vicious lingerie sale, finds her breasts growing larger and her body afflicted by a sudden growth of hair. The upside, however, is that men suddenly seem to find her irresistible, although her new romances have a disturbing tendency to turn up dead after a date or two.

So is Frida really turning werewolf, or do the film’s conundrums have some logical explanation? "We leave it open to debate," says producer Heidi Reinberg. Garry says she had just quit smoking when she wrote The Curse and in attempting to pinpoint the source of her own disaffection hit on P.M.S. as an apt metaphor for less obvious stress-related states thought to affect human behaviour. "We go through cycles in our lives that are not as well understood as the medical establishment would have you believe," she says.

Garry has an M.F.A. from NYU’s grad film program where she made six shorts including Thesis, a 24-minute comedy that won first prize at the Lucille Ball Festival of New Comedy in 1993. Her own d-girl experience came from D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, where she developed network TV features. She and Reinberg met two years ago while temping at a midtown investment firm Reinberg later used as an investor resource for Curse’s LLC financing. Garry was already teamed with digital audio post facility Hip Studios co-owner Trent Tooley, who handled on-set logistics while Reinberg, who most recently wrapped producing chores on Cynthia Wade’s Cinemax doc Grist for the Mill, worked off set.

The 16mm Curse shot in Manhattan and Brooklyn last fall with veteran commercial d.p. Bud Gardner, best known for the indelible title sequences he’s shot for films like Mo’ Better Blues, The Hudsucker Proxy and Little Buddha, as cinematographer. At press time the filmmakers were using a rough cut to attract completion finance and planning a work-in-progress screening at the ’99 IFFM. All rights are available.

Cast: Amy Laughlin, Mike Dooly, Sara Elena Knight, Matthew Arkin, Ken Garito, Holter Graham, Michael Campbell, Kevin McClatchy, Nick Gregory. Crew: Producers, Trent Tooley, Heidi Reinberg; Associate Producer, Robert L. Seigel; Screenwriter/Director/Editor, Jacqueline Garry; Co-Editor, Anna Josenhans; Cinematographer, Bud Gardner; Production Design, Luca Novelli; Casting, Jodi Collins. Contact: Not Another Hollywood Film, One Irving Place, U17D, New York, NY 10003. Tel/ Fax: (212) 387-9318. e-mail: notanother@aol.com; website: www.nahf.com.

But I’m a Cheerleader - Jamie Babbit
Chuck and Buck - Miguel Arteta
The Curse - Jacqueline Garry
Happy Accidents - Brad Anderson
The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me - Tim Kirkman
Seven Girlfriends - Paul Lazarus
Shift - Kelly Anderson
Shooting Vegetarians - Mikey Jackson
Ten Hundred Kings - D.W. Maze
Who is Bernard Tapie? - Marina Zenovich