Trilogy of Terror

Trilogy of Terror is a 1975 made-for-TV movie with Karen Black playing three roles. It’s generally lauded as a “cult classic,” so it’s within our purview to write about it and offer our professional comment. Hear, hear.

It was directed by Dan Curtis, who most famously created Dark Shadows, as well as other gothic television movies. All of these had a late Sixties, early Seventies charm, dabbling in the hackneyed and often trite world of graveyards, ghouls, vampires, witches, werewolves, and the weird. It was an era when The Night Stalker was a huge television movie hit. What the hell? Evil was groovy.

Black’s first segment "Julie" makes her almost unrecognizable to fans. She stars as a very straight-laced college professor, having the same sort of overall mien exhibited decades later by Jody Arias at her court appearances: glasses, conservative attire, and hair done up in a bun. The exterior belies a sexual olympiad, of course. At least, that is what student Chad (Black’s then real-life husband Robert Burton) thinks—and to that end, he ends up seducing and then drugging the errant prof. He gets a series of compromising photographs and then uses them to try and control Black, becoming increasingly ugly.

Needless to say, it doesn’t end well for him.

The next segment, “Milicent and Therese,” offers us Black in a similar role —if almost identical—to the first one, so much so in fact that at first we assume we’re dealing with the same character, same story. However, this is the story of two sisters who live in a great old manse (doesn’t everyone?), one of whom is a rather loose, blonde bombshell; the other a quiet, conservative, not-to-say retiring, dark-haired, bespectacled spinstress determined to use her sister’s interest in voodoo and the occult to even out the score.

Results seem predictable if the final twist at the end is not. Black, of course, resumes both roles.

The third and final segment, “Amelia,” involves a woman living in an upscale apartment who receives, as a gift, a peculiarly ugly and famous Zuni fetish doll with a little spear. It seems as if it is a living entity, as it comes to a ridiculous life as a puppet scurrying at breakneck speed across the floor, wielding sharp objects. As might be imagined, this does little to ameliorate Amelia, who tries to drown the little comical bastard in a bathtub before closing it in a suitcase or something. It tries to cut its way out.

The final scene ends the film with another twist. The movie is based on stories by Richard Matheson, who wrote The Legend of Hell House and The Omega Man, and many episodes of old shows like The Twilight Zone, including the famous episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” which starred a very unnerved William Shatner alongside what looked a little like a flying bear. The first two segments were adapted by William F. Nolan, who wrote Logan’s Run, Space for Hire, and other sci-fi novels of the Sixties and Seventies. Matheson adapted the last one.

It’s an amusing sixty-nine minutes or so—passable fare. Nothing extraordinary, but simple, memorable little shockers that might have come from an old horror comic, like perhaps The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor. It’s mostly polite, and well-mannered, if a little corny at the end. But what else did you expect?

It should be noted that the movie showcases the voluptuous horror of Karen Black, but the soundtrack most certainly does not feature any music by The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. File a grievance. Or use a voodoo doll, Zuni fetish, or some other such conveyance of dissatisfaction.

Finito.

Trilogy of Terror | English Full Movie | Horror Thriller

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