Tim Curry has become synonymous with spooky performances due to his range as an actor along with his incredible laugh and deep, dulcet-toned voice. But if you’re a Dirge reader, you’ve likely already seen him as Pennywise; you know his iconic performance in the nostalgic/terrible The Worst Witch; and you can do the Time Warp in your sleep. Like a great Asian restaurant, you need other Curry options. Some might be objectively “bad,” some are absolutely incredible, but here are my picks for alternative Tim Curry movies to watch during spooky season and all year long.
6. Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King (2008)
This is last on the list, for very good reason. I’m not saying you can’t watch it, but it is sadly lacking in Tim Curry, and the whole plot is somehow not “Dr. Frank N. Furter meets Jareth from Labyrinth.” (Please, someone make this happen before I die.)
Shaggy and Scooby are the main characters of this movie. Velma is mostly not present, either, as it deals with “real” ghosts and goblins, and her logical brain “can’t handle” it, so they have her pass out cold in the back of the Mystery Machine and Fred and Daphne just stay with her while the stoners go and solve the mystery. Sure, Jan.
Oh there are also fairies involved in all of this, along with a headless horseman, talking jack-o-lantern, goblins, ghosts, witches, and every other type of vaguely spooky imagery you could imagine. The main plot is that a Wayne Knight-voiced evil magician steals “good” power from a fairy and needs the Goblin King’s staff (heh) to gain full “evil” power to balance out the “good” fairy power and then he will be fully … powerful, I guess? And able to do “real” magic and not the cheap illusions and tricks a whore does for money (and candy).
Tim Curry voices the titular Goblin King, but he has like four minutes of dialogue in the entire movie. He’s the Hannibal Lecter of this shitty Hanna-Barbera joint. The plot is nonsense, even for a Scooby-Doo movie, and while we get Wallace Shawn voicing a magic shop owner who busts out into a song for no reason, Tim Curry doesn’t sing, even though there is a song that happens during the goblin Halloween party.
This stays on the list because it is Halloween-themed and not at all scary, plus it does have some of Tim Curry’s famously epic evil laughter. Plus Lauren fucking Bacall was the voice of the Grand Witch, who makes a joke about not getting to ride her broom, so it’s gone flaccid, and … let’s just stop there.
Watch it if: You have little kids and need something fall/Halloween-adjacent to watch that probably won’t scare them; you want to hear Vizzini sing a song about magic being real on Halloween; you have both a Velma and furry fetish situation going on and you need to see brief glimpses of Velma as a werewolf (or watch the video above for the Scooby/Velma crossover you probably never wanted); you can stomach Jay Leno voicing the most annoying jack-o-lantern that has ever existed and that possibly has a blaccent in some moments?! Someone fetch a guillotine!
5. Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost (1999)
Another Scooby-Doo movie? Have I turned into Matt O’Connell? Not fully, as my legs will never look as good as his in shorts, but this Scooby-Doo movie made the list for having a semi-coherent plot, decent dialogue, a complete misunderstanding of Wicca, and most importantly, Tim Curry voices a Stephen King-esque horror author. THANK YOU HANNA-BARBERA.
Maybe it’s because this was the Scooby-Doo that I grew up watching, but this movie was so much better than the Goblin King. Granted, it’s still not haut cinema, but it was watchable and had plot points that made sense, at least in the first half. Velma is in full fangirl form, fawning over Ben Ravencroft (Tim Curry), the horror author from a small town in Massachusetts who lives in Europe now (probably to explain Tim’s British accent) but is back in the US to check out his old hometown and his estate there and hey, would the gang like to come along with him? Velma practically throws her panties at him, and while he keeps calling them “kids” to Fred’s chagrin, he notably is hitting on Velma a lot. Velma desperately wants to slam in the back of his Dragula in return, and honestly? Between his cunty little ponytail-glasses-and-bangs combo, plus the blazer and Tim Curry’s voice, I can see the appeal.
We once again are devoid of Tim Curry singing, but we do get the Hex Girls, a trio of witches (with vampire fangs for some reason) where the lead singer is “1/16th Wiccan.” There are multiple inaccurate accountings of Wicca and its followers and practices via the singer, Velma, and Ben, who claims to be descended from the town’s “witch,” whom he claims was really a misunderstood Wiccan healer. It’s amazingly wrong about Wicca and even as I cringed about how they were misappropriating the one-drop rule (and how, of course, that ended up being the key to saving the world), I was bopping along to the songs the Hex Girls played. They apparently show up in several other Scooby-Doo movies and episodes, and honestly, I might have to search for those songs.
Watch it if: You always wondered what it would be like if Stephen King were British and definitely, not just possibly, evil; misinterpretations of Wicca and history won’t trigger some kind of emotional turmoil from deep within your soul; you want to rock out to some incredible, kid-friendly witchy music; you feel a nostalgia for Scooby-Doo movies with decent plotting after watching the atrocity that is Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King; you need a kid-friendly movie but also need to hear Tim Curry’s soothing voice (and some amazing evil laughter) for about an hour.
4. The Three Musketeers (1993)
What in the early-1990s kind of fuckery is this? This is bad in a fun way, with Tim Curry being the out-and-out obvious villain from literally the first scene of the movie. Assuming you haven’t read the novel in quite some time, let’s refresh the plot: It’s France, 1625. The young French king is being assisted by Cardinal Richelieu (Tim Curry of course), who is evil and wants power and glory for himself. The Cardinal orders for the disbanding of the Musketeers, aka, the king’s personal guard, which he does without the king’s knowledge.
Meanwhile, in the countryside, young D’Artagnan (Chris O’Donnell) yearns to be a Musketeer like his dead father was, so he makes his way to the city and pisses off three of the remaining outlaw Musketeers while being chased by a Stewart from Mad TV prototype from the Cardinal’s band of … mercenaries, I guess? They also give Chris the most atrocious wig; combined with his outfit (minus his jaunty plumed hat), he looks like Frodo goddamn Baggins!
You can probably guess the rest of the plot as it’s pretty standard stuff. What kills me, though, is that the other Musketeers are played by: Oliver Platt, who is doing his very own Laszlo-Cravensworth-cum-Jack-Sparrow impersonation before either character existed; Charlie Sheen, who is the religious and Bible-toting Musketeer though we see him about three seconds from entering a woman whose husband suddenly bursts in the room before he can bust into her; and Kiefer Sutherland, who is being … Kiefer Sutherland. Yet somehow, not one of these extremely French characters has even the slightest hint of any kind of European accent. Every time he says his name is D’Artagnan, Chris O’Donnell might as well be spitting chew into a styrofoam cup while arguing about “Note-er Dayme” football. They could have cast Carey Elwes in literally *any* of these roles.
What they did do right was cast Tim Curry as the Cardinal. He’s perfectly evil and power-hungry and strangely hot in that religious garb while scheming to take over France. One of the first things we see on screen is him having a man executed for stealing, and after the killing is done, he smiles and says, “One less mouth to feed” in the same way he says “One from the vaults” in Rocky Horror, and I could hear the Dragula pulling up outside because I was ready. Whenever this man is evil and killing people, I am locked the fuck in.
Watch it if: You need some early 1990s nostalgia; you love bad wigs and questionable costume design; you love to see Tim Curry be the weirdly hot bad guy; you love Starburst; you love to watch dudes constantly swordfighting (not a euphemism) while conveniently falling off horseback into giant stacks of hay that are just everywhere, all the time, for no reason, because I guess that’s historically accurate to France in 1625?; you love European history but prefer it without all the accents except for Tim Curry’s perfect voice.
3. FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992)
I nearly forgot to include this movie; shame on me, but also, I didn’t know Tim Curry was the voice of Hexxus until many years after I last saw this movie. I watched it a lot as a kid but haven’t seen it in years, and on rewatch, it is both absolutely devastating and not nearly as good as I remembered it being. Which makes sense for a movie geared towards kids in the early 90s.
Crysta is a fairy living in the rainforest of FernGully. The animals, insects, and other fairies who inhabit the forest don’t believe humans exist anymore. They also think they are safe from danger as their other arch nemesis, Hexxus, was trapped in a tree by the eldest fairy (who may or may not be Crysta’s grandma?), Magi Lune. But they were all deceived, as humans are not extinct, and are actually nearby, practicing unsafe deforestation. Naturally, a 16-year-old Australian boy with no Australian accent named Zak is a summer intern for this unnamed company that’s destroying the local ecosystem by marking the trees that need to be removed. (Spoiler alert: It’s every tree.) Naturally, they unleash Hexxus; Crysta saves Zak from being killed by a falling tree by accidentally shrinking him down to fairy size; Hexxus takes over the machinery and heads to raze FernGully to the ground as fast as possible.
I’d forgotten that the events of this movie take place in … 24 hours or less, apparently, as Hexxus has made it all the way to FernGully by the very next morning after being slashed awake and oozing out of his old oak tree prison. I’d also forgotten that he is barely in this movie minus the ending; we get *maybe* ten minutes of Tim Curry in a 75-minute movie. We get way more of the fake Australian wanting to fuck a fairy while learning that nature is actually beautiful and shouldn’t be destroyed for capitalism. Guess nobody learned that lesson, and that’s not a horrible thing to remind yourself given the current state of the world or anything!!!
We do get one very important thing, however: TIM CURRY SINGS. A WHOLE SONG. IT’S CALLED “TOXIC LOVE” AND IT’S THE BEST THING EVER. It’s easily the greatest song in a movie where there’s also a song with Robin Williams rapping and yet another song with Tone Loc as some kind of lizard creature who sings about eating Zak because he’s tasty?! That character is never seen again; he just appears for one awkward song and bounces. There’s so much weird shit about this movie that I had blocked out. Still a worthy Tim Curry watch, mostly for this song and his increasingly evil laughter as the movie goes on. Oh and Christian Slater voices a fairy who’s kind of like the fairy version of Gaston for most of the movie. That’s a thing that happened.
Watch it if: You miss a very specific style of animation where the background becomes just kind of generically blurry except for key scenes; you’re mourning a childhood when the world seemed full of hope and the possibility of stopping capitalism from ruining our planet and need a good cry about it; you need a movie with Tim Curry’s menacing laughter and exceptional singing voice; you wish you could be shrunk down and turned into a fairy and live on a tree amongst toadstools/have always had a fairy fetish; you really fucking love Tone Loc.
2. Legend (1985)
This is another movie I watched at too early of an age and haven’t watched since childhood. Holy shit, I was unprepared to rewatch it as an adult, but first of all, Tim Curry as Darkness is the best thing about this movie, and somehow he is both the main character and also barely in it? We hear him from the very first scene, and his voice is possibly as deep as I’ve ever heard it, which is gorgeous. We hear him several other times but we don’t actually see him until one hour and 16 minutes into the movie (I checked). That’s pretty far in for a movie that’s one hour and 53 minutes with a long credit sequence!!
The problem with this movie overall is that they over-explained the plot while also under-explaining literally everything else. You have to already understand fairy tale logic and our general cultural understandings of fairies, a satyr, demons, goblins, and dwarves, for starters, in order to half make sense of the plot, such as it is.
For example, is Tom Cruise’s Jack some kind of elf? Maybe? No? I don’t see that as fact but it would make a lot more sense if he is a woodland nymph of some sort. (Sidenote: If I had a nickel for every time a character yells, “JACK!!!” I’d have a shitload of nickels.) He’s a nature boy hybrid of Peter Pan and Tarzan (Peter Panzan? TarPan?) who morphs into a fighter out of nowhere, beginning with baby’s first beheading of a swamp witch, I think? He wears a chainmail top with tiny shorts and his legs are out the whole time, and I, for one, was not mad about it. He also still has his original teeth and a unibrow! Current Tom Cruise would never.
There are also unicorns! Sin! Darkness of various types! SO. MUCH. GLITTER. Everything is coated in glitter, down to Darkness’ hooves. The set design, costuming, and prosthetic work are all fucking incredible. It makes me miss the time before CGI, when so many things had to actually be made by hand. If they remade this now, they’d make Darkness purely by CGI and he’d look like a Psymonster (derogatory). Mia Sara is beautiful in both the light and dark versions of herself, and her acting was better than I remembered, but that’s not saying much; ditto with PeTarzan’s performance.
Tim Curry is, hands down, the best part. He’s at his darkest, most glorious monstrously dark self, and his voice matches every inch of his heavily prostheticed body. That’s maybe another criticism: You literally wouldn’t know it was Tim Curry except for his voice. He looks incredible, but it could be almost anyone in those hooves. It’s his voice that shines, to me, amongst the prostheses. Truly excellent evil laughter at play here.
Watch it if: You want to remember when Tom Cruise was young and could move his whole face at will; you need to see some lush scenery and excellent costumes/prosthetic work in your life; you’re willing to coast through on vibes and a vague understanding of the background of what’s going on while they beat you over the face with the fact that only sunshine can get rid of Darkness; your favorite part of Tim Curry is his voice and you need to hear it a lot, right away, thank you.
1. Clue (1985)
Surprising absolutely nobody who knows me at all, my top choice is Clue, always and forever. “But wait, I know that movie!” you might be saying. Well, good! Go watch it again! Unless you already love this movie as much as I do and you watch it multiple times a year, you probably haven’t seen it since it would play on a loop on TNT or TBS way back in the olden times. Or, maybe it has somehow eluded you all these years. In that case, let’s give you a little rundown of one of the greatest pieces of cinema of all time.
It’s 1954, and yes, that is important. Tim Curry is Wadsworth, the butler, who butles, because he’s the head of the kitchen and dining room and keeps everything tidy. He greets the guests who are arriving to meet Mr. Boddy, who has been secretly blackmailing all of the guests for year(s) for everything from running a brothel to being gay while working in the government. Sounds an awful lot like life in 2025…. Anyway, Mr. Boddy is murdered, and then other people tangentially involved in these blackmail cases start arriving and dying in quick succession. But who’s behind all this? Well, it depends on what ending you prefer.
One of the greatest things about this film (besides the absolutely incredible cast and their performances and costumes) is that there are three separate-yet-equally-possible endings. True, the last one we see is what “really happened,” but the fact that it was even set up to have possible alternative endings is a huge feat, and not something a studio would risk doing now. Or if they did it, they’d do a shitass job of it, you mark my words.
This is a perfect Tim Curry movie: He’s funny, he’s sinister, he gets to laugh his great laugh AND showcase his physical comedic strengths with some of the greatest slapstick work of all time. Plus, in one of the endings, he sings for a little bit! He also gives a layered, nuanced performance on top of it all. Once you see the endings and watch it again, you’ll catch something you missed the last time you watched. I have been watching this movie from an inappropriately young age, and I still pick up on little details I missed originally 30 years later. That’s an amazing feat.
The rest of the cast is also perfect, which only bolsters his performance. I mean, how can you miss with Madeline Kahn, Eileen Brennan, Lesley Ann Warren (who gave me my lifelong obsession with Miss Scarlet in this role), Martin Mull, Michael McKean, and Christopher Lloyd in the main roles? This is also the movie I referred to earlier where we get Jane Wiedlin from The Go-Go’s in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene, but she’s in it, so that counts.
Watch it if: You love actually funny dialogue; prefer your thriller-esque movies to have multiple possible endings; slapstick comedy is your jam; have a thing for hot, busty women in French maid uniforms and/or tight green dresses; just love Tim Curry, because this is one of his best performances in anything, ever, and that is saying something.
