Thiel-a-Vision Review: Trilogy of Terror (1975)

September 2006 saw the DVD rerelease of Trilogy of Terror, a 1975 made-for-TV movie starring Karen Black and--more memorably--the nightmarish Zuni Fetish Doll.

A lot of folks around my age remember being terrified as a child by this film, but not me. That's because I was too scared to even watch it. All it took was a look at the photo of the Zuni doll in ABC's ad for TV Guide, and there was no way I was getting anywhere near the tube that night. While I was fascinated by monster movies as a youth, I "saw" more than my share of them cowering in the dining room, listening to the sound of the family room set and poking my head out during the less frightening bits.

Trilogy was directed and produced by Dan Curtis, creator of the gothic soap Dark Shadows and responsible for the two TV-movies which introduced the monster-fighting journalist Kolchak the "Night Stalker." It starred Karen Black, primarily known for movie roles, as four characters spread over three tales based on short stories by Richard Matheson. Matheson wrote some of the better known episodes of the original Twilight Zone as well as a great many horror novels and screenplays, and he adapted his own "Prey" as the final segment of the anthology film. (The other two adaptations were scripted by William F. Nolan, author of Logan's Run.)

Everyone remembers the murderous fetish doll, but not necessarily the other two stories. That's not surprising, as neither of these tales appear to have received the memo about involving "terror." In the first, Black plays a dowdy teacher who is blackmailed into becoming a sex slave to one of her students. The second has her playing two sisters: one a priggish spinster who plots to rid herself of the other, a vicious slut. It's the least effective of the three, as the dual casting makes the twist ending thuddingly obvious.

The one thing I did find surprising about that first segment was the amount of (implied) sexual content. Julie the schoolteacher is drugged, stripped, photographed and presumably raped. Subsequently, she finds herself forced to cater to her blackmailer's whims, including one occasion when he slips her a note in class ordering her to come back to his apartment to "meet a few of his friends." That's strong stuff for mid-'70s TV.

Similarly, there's quite a lot more blood on display than one might expect in the final segment, as Black's lone apartment dweller is mercilessly stabbed and bitten by the aforementioned killer doll. It's an amazingly simple, yet effective storyline: a woman buys a native warrior fetish as a gift for her anthropologist boyfriend and is then forced to fight for her life when the golden chain which keeps its evil spirit in check falls away unnoticed.

Tiny monsters, with their ability to scamper behind and beneath the furniture, have always frightened me as much if not moreso than full-size creatures. And unlike others in the horror subspecies made up of dolls, puppets and ventriloquist dummies, the Zuni (aka "He-Who-Kills") isn't subtle or shy: he screams "Ay-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi!" as he rushes pell-mell at Black, waving a kitchen knife. If Twilight Zone's Talky Tina and He-Who-Kills ever had a throwdown, he'd whack off her head before she finished saying "I'm Talky Tina..."

The special effects are crude, but rapid editing keeps them from being too silly. The Zuni is seen mostly in quick cuts and flashes, and much of his movement around the apartment is depicted as floor-level point-of-view camerawork.

While there were other notable made-for-TV horror flicks back in the '70s--among them Killdozer, Gargoyles and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark--Trilogy of Terror is the one which is remembered the most. That's pretty good work for a toothy wooden puppet.

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