I remember watching the vhs of this movie before and it ended with Zack looking back and then the credits, but I have the blu ray and then the movie continues with the events with what happened in the beginning of the movie and then seeing the glowing liquid popping out of the ground
shareYes, it's an altered version of the film - same as the DVD double-feature.
I still have my old big-box ex-rental VHS tape of "The Curse"... Originally, the film opened with the aerial shots of the farm, and the ending was the guy vainly tying to warn people that "It's in the water."
The DVD version moved the final scene to the beginning of the film, making it into a kind of prologue and adding a "six months earlier" subtitle just before you go into what was the original opening.
It then added that new ending, with the guy in hospital - covered in bandages in a laughably bad attempt to cover up the fact that this was added footage and they didn't have the same actor anymore.
The original version of the film was much stronger, I thought - starting with "normality" and letting the audience progressively realise what was happening alongside the characters ... instead of a blunt reveal in advance, rendering the first half-hour or so of the film an exercise in waiting for the characters to catch up with what we've already been told. And the original ending provided your classic Bodysnatchers-style "Oh no, it's everywhere!" revelation just before the credits rolled. Much more satisfying.
I have no idea what the reasoning was behind the alteration and tacked-on "new" ending scene - who did it, or where it came from - but if I had to guess then I'd say it was probably done for TV, to provide an "in" for some direct-to-TV sequel that never happened.
As you will know, the film that is called "Curse 2" is a completely unrelated film, given that name in a cynical attempt to con a few more suckers into renting it based on awareness of the moderately-successful original. Something that used to happen quite often back in the 80s/90s before we had the internet to check the facts :)
Mentioned these changes on another site, and someone there said the version on Blu-ray / DVD (altered beginning and ending) is the way the film was always shown in America. I can't verify that, because I'm not American.
The version I'm familiar with is the UK rental VHS from the late 1980s.
I suspect the UK release is the film's original cut, because that extended ending is clearly a re-shoot - as evidenced by the lame attempt to mask (literally!) the fact that the actor wasn't available anymore.
IMHO the UK version I'm familiar with works a lot better, structurally, with what is now the opening scene as the ending, and without that tacky "new" ending grafted on.