Curse of the Starving Class is a play by Sam Shepard, considered the first of a series on family tragedies. Drama about a dirt-poor 1950's-era farm family. Dad's a foul talking drunk and Mom is desperately trying to save what's left of their family life.
James Woods
Weston Tate
Kathy Bates
Ella Tate
Randy Quaid
Taylor
Henry Thomas
Wesley Tate
Kristin Fiorella
Emma Tate
Louis Gossett Jr.
Ellis
Jim Fitzpatrick
Emerson (as James Fitzpatrick)
Mark Hanson
Bar Patron (uncredited)
Dea Vise
Curse of the Starving Class is a play by Sam Shepard, considered the first of a series on family tragedies. Drama about a dirt-poor 1950's-era farm family. Dad's a foul talking drunk and Mom is desperately trying to save what's left of their family life.
An Irish Catholic family returns to 1930s Limerick after a child's death in America. The unemployed I.R.A. veteran father struggles with poverty, prejudice, and alcoholism as the family endures harsh slum conditions.
In a forgotten pocket of Southern Ohio where American manufacturing and opportunity are drying up, a determined young woman finds a ticket out when she is accepted to college. Alongside her older brother, Ruth Avery joins a dangerous scrap metal crew in order to pay her way. Together, they spend one brutal winter working the scrap yards during the day and stealing valuable metal from the once thriving factories by night. With her goal in sight, Ruth finds that the ultimate cost of an education for a girl like her may be more than she bargained for, and she soon finds herself torn between a promising future and the family she would leave behind.
An urgent phone call pulls a Yale Law student back to his Ohio hometown, where he reflects on three generations of family history and his own future.
Two drifters, one a gentle but slow giant, try to make money working the fields during the Depression so they can fulfill their dreams.
A destitute 14-year-old struggles to keep his life together despite harsh abuse at his mother's hands, harsher abuse at his father's, and a growing separation from his slightly older brother.
When the ongoing rivalry between farmers Michael and Jack suddenly escalates, it triggers a chain of events that take increasingly violent and devastating turns, leaving both families permanently altered.
Kate lives a secluded life—until her troubled daughter shows up, frightened and covered in someone else's blood. As Kate unravels the shocking truth, she learns just how far a mother will go to try to save her child.
When a son and mother move to Seattle in hopes for a better life, the mother meets a seemingly polite man. Things go south when the man turns out to be abusive, endangering their lives. As the mother struggles to maintain hope in an impossible situation, the son has plans to escape.
A former special forces contractor is forced out of retirement as an avocado farmer in Mexico when local gangsters try to force him and his family off their farm.
A small town policeman must investigate a suspicious hunting accident. The investigation and other events result in him slowly disintegrating mentally.