Tim’s Pic (kind of): “Trilogy of Terror”

Trilogy of Terror

This is not quite a Tim Pic because I have seen it before (and just a few years ago). However, Tim emailed me about it and while I remembered seeing it, I started to wonder if I had. From the first opening shot of the “Julie” segment, it all came back to me!

William Nolan adapts two short stories by Richard Matheson for the first two segments. Matheson writes his own script for the third from his short story “Prey”.

Julie

Holy shit, so front-loaded with references and meta-commentary. Karen Black is Julie Eldritch, starting with Lovecraft out of the gate and her date-rapist Chad books them a motel room under the name of Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Harker.

Additionally, the movie they go see at the drive-in was Dan Curtis’s “The Night Stalker” from a couple of years before. (Chad calls it a boring movie, to boot.) Chad is played by Robert Burton, a journeyman actor from soaps, TV series and “Linda Lovelace for President.” He infuses Chad with arrogance and sleaze. It’s hard to believe this was a TV movie. 

Chad goes after college English professor Julie Eldritch by roofie-ing her, taking photos of her in the cheap motel where he “took advantage” of her. Julie is on the surface a shy, retiring, square of a teacher. However, we find out later, she’s freaking dangerous. 

She was stringing Chad along the whole time and is apparently a serial killer. She slips something potent in his drink after he berates her for saying that what she wants isn’t important. “You drugged me!” “No, dear, I killed you.” The script by Richard Matheson is succinct and delivers the goods. And yes, Julie keeps a scrapbook of her kills.

No sooner does she finish adding a report of Chad’s demise into the collection than a new student/victim comes a-knocking at the door.

Therese and Millicent

Another efficient bit of storytelling, Black plays two sisters, one of whom is a dowdy dowager and the other is the polar opposite, or so we are led to believe.

The sisters have just lost their father. Millie is distraught and sad and judgmental. Therese, we are to gather is a degenerate slut. This we gather from Millicent’s own account. Millicent is a God-fearing do-gooder who intervenes in one of Therese’s affairs. 

Then we get a look at Therese, Black in a blonde wig, mini-dress and tank top. She answers the door when Millie’s doctor (spoiler: he was the family’s physician), pays a visit. She reams him after she fails to seduce him. She heads back to Millie’s room where we apparently see Millie writing about Therese, who allegedly, passes out in a drunken stupor. Millie determines that she’s had enough of Therese’s abuse and decides that Therese must die.

Millicent’s rage grows when she learns that Therese had broken a child’s doll. Millie decides to use Therese’s own interest in black magic to end Therese’s life. She assembles the requisite personal effects of Therese’s to carry out whatever spell she’s going to use. She calls Dr. Ramsey to tell him his services will no longer be needed. He demurs and makes a visit to the house the next day.

He finds Therese dead, the victim of a voodoo curse (there’s a doll with a pin in it by her body). After reporting her death, an ambulance shows up and the doc removes Therese’s blonde wig before the EMTs take her away. She was the most advanced case of dual personality he had ever seen. 

Amelia

Black again, opens a package with a Zuni doll, a ferocious looking fetish that she is apparently giving to her boyfriend Arthur. Amelia has mother issues, though; mom lays a guilt trip on her when she wants to spend time with her boyfriend for his birthday. Yeah, sounds like this is the first time she’s lived away from home and mom is a controlling bitch.

When she tells her mother about the Zuni fetish doll - that may possess a hunter’s spirit - her mother hangs up on her. The necklace that is supposed to inhibit the spirit falls off after Amelia goes to take a bath. 

Amelia calls Arthur to cancel plans so she can spend time with mom. Did I mention Mom’s a controlling bitch? If I can find a shot of Amelia’s kitchen, I’ll post it: it is so seventies, I thought I was sixteen again.

Amelia returns to the living room to find the doll has vanished under the sofa and is apparently stabbed by the little bugger. The doll has gone mobile! She goes back into the kitchen and finds a knife missing. By this point, we know this is not a good thing. She talks herself into not accepting what we know is happening.

Well, until the little sonuvabitch starts carving up her feet. And holy shit, is this disturbing or what? Amelia locks herself in her room, calls for the police and the doll breaks in. Oh, he’s persistent! She secures herself in her bathroom and the little guy continues trying to get in. Oh, and he does. She captures him in a blanket and proceeds to …drown him in the bathtub?

Not very effective. In a closet, she traps him in a suitcase when he breaks in. And of course, he starts carving his way out. Why does she try to grab the knife blade as he’s carving his way out? I don’t know. But turnabout is fair play as she turns the table on him by stabbing the shti out of him. Is he…is he…FUCK NO HE’S NOT! He jumps at her and starts chomping on her arm, then chases her back in the kitchen where he gnaws on her neck until she stuffs him in the oven. Friday nights, amirite?

She braces the oven door with her whole body and we eventually hear the doll’s cries cease. She opens the door and through the flames we see her toss her head back and shriek. The screen fades to black and Amelia calls her mother to come over. Possessed by the Zuni doll’s spirit and teeth, Amelia begins crouching in wait.

As with most anthologies, mileage may vary; but Curtis accomplishes something here that for a TV movie is pretty exceptional. While the first two entries rely on twists that are straight out of a Tales of the Crypt comic book (that’s not a bad thing), the Amelia episode is more effective for maintaining a level of tension throughout. To be sure, the whole movie is Black’s show and she does not disappoint. Her range was often impressive and here we get a kind of compressed look at some of it.

While the last segment is the tightest, the first two are worthwhile for what Black does with pretty stock characters. The subtext of women on the verge holds the narratives together and it’s hard to dismiss as merely pulp Black’s delivery of three (well, four, kind of) women who are not what they seem or become something other. It’s arguable that Julie is a righteous angel of vengeance, Therese and Millicent show how reductive (and fatal) the the Mother/Whore dichotomy is, and Amelia is declaration of liberation from under the old generation’s submission to patriarchy. Or not. 

Sometimes, pulpy horror is just pulpy horror. “Trilogy of Terror” is available on Amazon Prime. If you have an hour to kill, so to speak, I say have at it.

Additional notes

I have to give props to Dan Curtis, if only because he bequeathed to pop culture the first really important vampire series, “Dark Shadows.” I would try to beat it home from school to catch an episode when it first aired and was completely entranced. It premiered when I was nine, but by sixth grade, I was in. There was a small group of us in middle school who knew the score.

Before “Trilogy of Terror”, he also directed Jack Palance in an extremely faithful adaptation of “Dracula” to good effect. I’m due for a rewatch, for sure. His take on “The Turn of the Screw” with Lynn Redgrave is worth a look, as well.

A lot of his horror stuff is pretty slick, if dated, but there’s something about his ambition and the deftness of execution that made a lot of his work stick. “The Curse of the Black Widow” was better than it had any right to be and “Burnt Offerings” is, as I recall, pretty swell. 

I don’t want to oversell Curtis, but he was an assured craftsman and it shows. He branched out with the two Herman Wouk mini-series of “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance” in the 80s and continued directing up to a year before he died. 

There’s something about the efficient, disciplined work directors like Curtis bring to admittedly somewhat hacky properties or what would be hack work in the hands of less skilled helmers. 

Another ringer behind the film at hand is cinematographer Paul Lohman who shot, among other titles, “Coffy”, “California Split”, and in 1975, the same year as “Trilogy of Terror”, a little film called “Nashville.” In addition to shooting “Silent Movie” and “High Anxiety” for Mel Brooks, Lohman shot two of my favorite guilty pleasures (that’s actually b.s.; I have no guilt about my pleasures), “Mommie Dearest” and the Divine vehicle, “Lust in the Dust.”