I've been getting into older horror movies a bit more recently, and a bit ago, I came across this movie which stars Karen Black in all three stories who I easily recalled as Mama Firefly from House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects. I thought she was creepy as fuck in those movies and low and behold....she didn't gain that talent late in life, Karen Black is delightfully unsettling in all three stories.
Trilogy of Terror is broken into 3 stories all of which have Black as the main lead. In the first story, she plays an innocent teacher named Julie, who is drugged and blackmailed by a malicious student. But low and behold, she isn't nearly as innocent as she looks. In the second story, she plays Millicent Larimore, a woman dedicated to murdering her heartless hoe of a sister named Therese. And in the third story, she plays Amelia, a very passive and weak woman who buys a tiki doll for her boyfriend, and as expected...this tiki doll is quite deadly.
Considering Black is the main character in all three stories and not a ton of energy is dedicated to other characters, a lot of the movie's potential to fail/succeed does rest on her shoulders...and luckily, she carries it off well. Though the 3 different characters all have some similiarites linking their personas together, they also have some differences that Black pulls off rather well. And she's fucking creepy in all three. Hat's off to her.
None of these stories are very scary (in fact, they have the tendencies to resemble moderately creepy campfire stories as opposed to plots ina movie), but there are a couple of pretty cool moments and it was a pretty intelligent idea to make the movie short, with 3 stories, making it pretty hard for the movie's 3 segments to overstay their welcome. It's not a movie that will chill you to the bone, but it's pretty fun to watch and in terms of how the story moves, it's what Goldilocks would describe as, "just right".
3/4
I clearly recall being a young boy back in the days before cable TV; you know, when there were basically three network channles and UHF? Kids and adults today have been bombarded and saturated with so much violence, blood, and gore that it takes quite a plot and intense CGI to make something more than merely creepy.
ReplyDeleteTrilogy of Terror was going to be broadcast as the ABC Movie of the Week on March 4, 1975 when I was six years old. This was indicated in the TV Guide, and they were even selling replicas of the Tiki doll through the magazine.
I don't clearly remember the other stories very well, but I do remember how utterly terrified I was of that doll when it sprang to life and began its rampage after Black with homicidal intent! I had nightmares for weeks afterwords, and was certain that it was under my bed with a butcher knife at night.
When Karen black looked up from the oven and opened her mouth revealing those evil pointed teeth, I almost wet my Tough Skins...lol. Even today, I find that living dead doll scarier than more modern attempts like Chucky that to me seem laughable in comparision.
I will give you that I was a child at the time, and I would agree that by modern standards it is a C+;However, back in it's day I would say it was a straight A, but that is just my humble opinion.