Don't Be Afraid of the Dark sparked my interest in made-for-TV horror from the 70's and 80's, so I moved on to Trilogy of Terror, possibly the most famous made-for-TV horror film released during the sub-genre's heyday. I'd caught the sequel, 1996's Trilogy of Terror II, which featured the Zuni fetish doll made popular by the first film, years ago, and enjoyed it, and honestly have no good explanation for having waited so long to see the original. Both films were directed by Dan Curtis, and the first features three vignettes based on stories by Richard Matheson. Karen Black plays the lead (different characters) in each, in stories named after her characters: "Julie," "Millicent and Therese," and "Amelia". In the first, she plays a teacher who is drugged and blackmailed by a deranged student; in the second, she is a woman living in fear of her psychotic sister, a mental patient who scares off everyone from possible lovers to neighborhood children.
The final story is the most famous and features the aforementioned Zuni fetish doll, which was featured again in the third segment of Trilogy of Terror II, eleven years later. While not the first "living doll" story ever put to film (check out the Twilight Zone episode "Living Doll" for a brilliant early entry in the sub-genre), this particularly vicious doll certainly had influence on later films from Child's Play (1987) to just about everything Full Moon released in the early nineties. The first two stories are good, but this last episode is the best and features an extremely creepy final shot.
Trilogy of Terror was an ABC Movie of the Week, and is one of the better anthology horror films out there, ranking with Creepshow (1982), Tales From the Darkside: the Movie (1990), and the more recent, and brilliant, Trick 'R Treat (2008). Originally the pilot episode to a proposed TV series, it stands on its own as a fine example of the best of this type of film.
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You may want to check out the Curtis/Matheson follow-up DEAD OF NIGHT, another pilot for a proposed series. In one of the segments, "Bobby" (remade in TRILOGY OF TERROR II), they tried to capture some of the same feeling as "Amelia," as a mother is terrified by the son she has brought back with an occult ritual. Interestingly, DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK director John Newland also helmed Matheson's sole episode of THRILLER, "The Return of Andrew Bentley." Matheson, of course, wrote two more of the scariest '70s TV-movies, Steven Spielberg's debut DUEL and the Curtis-produced original NIGHT STALKER (plus its sequel, THE NIGHT STRANGLER). Interested parties can read more in my book RICHARD MATHESON ON SCREEN, tentatively scheduled for an early-October publication.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the suggestion, Bradley. I'll look out for that book, too.
ReplyDeleteMuch obliged. FYI, it has just been proofread and indexed, and should be headed off to the printers. Of course, you can always pre-order it. :-)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-4216-4