• Directed by Dan Curtis
• Written by Dan Curtis, Richard Matheson and William F. Nolan (based in part on stories by Henry Kuttner and Richard Matheson)
• Starring
  • Lysette Anthony
  • Geraint Wyn Davies
  • Matt Clark
  • Geoffrey Lewis
• Produced by Julian Marks

The original Trilogy of Terror was a 1975 TV-movie, and probably would have faded into the background with all other period TV-movies, but it had two memorable “gimmicks”. One was that all three of its segments starred Karen Black in different roles; the other was that one segment featured a murderous Zuni fetish doll, an image which stuck in viewers’ minds and looked good on a video cover. (And we can all imagine Charles Band watching the first Trilogy of Terror, and screaming, “Eureka!”)

The sequel, made twenty long years after by the same director, Dan Curtis, has both of those features going for it (the triple role this time being played by Lysette Anthony). It also has another plus: the stories are all fairly engaging.

The first story, “The Graveyard Rats,” is based on a story by Henry Kuttner, and it probably the weakest of the three. Anthony (her hair short and blonde) is Laura, philandering wife of a bitter, paraplegic millionaire who’s threatening to expose her affair with her cousin Ben (Geraint Wyn Davies, star of Forever Knight). Ben’s solution? Let’s kill him! And down the stairs in his wheelchair goes the hubby, bounce bounce bounce.

They prepare to plant him in the old family plot, but the old caretaker Stubbs (character staple Geoffrey Lewis) advises against it, saying that the entire old south yard is riddled with tunnels — dug by rats the size of dogs. Stubbs is also a bit of an unreliable sort, we also find out — not above a little bit of graverobbing.

Alas, hubby stipulated quite distinctly that he be buried in the family plot, so he is. (It looked to me like Stubbs should have been covering the fact that he took absolutely no care of the old south yard; matted grass and gnarled bracken look great on screen, but I’ve never seen even an abandoned pioneer cemetery that looked that bad.) It isn’t until the reading of the will the next day that Laura finds out that, though she’s sole heir, conniving hubby has drained both the business and personal accounts, placing all funds in Swiss banks, with the account numbers recorded only on a tiny piece of microfilm hidden somewhere. It takes a few hours for Laura to figure it out: Hubby had an antique watch, the watch had a secret compartment, and hubby had stipulated in his will that it be buried with him.

If you can foresee a run-in that night between Laura and Ben, Stubbs, and a horde of vicious handpuppets, you’re right on the money.

Director Curtis was wise to place this segment first; it has an uncertain pace, character motivations (and their changes) are only sketched in, and, well, the monster menace is a horde of handpuppets. It also relies on the assumption that no one in the viewing audience realizes that coffins ain’t just thrown in a hole in the ground these days. Most often, there’s a concrete box into which the coffin is placed, and a concrete slab cover put over it. (Read Stephen King’s Pet Sematary for a crash course in burials.) Not the kind of thing that a single guy with a shovel would be able to remove, and not the kind of thing that rats (I don’t care how big) would be able to chew through in less than 24 hours.

Notwithstanding, this 30-minute segment is still better than the full 90 minutes of the similarly-themed movie The Dark.

Story 2 is “Bobby,” from a story by Richard Matheson, and it’s probably my favorite of the three. Lysette, this time with long dark hair, is a mother grieving for her son who drowned off the cliffs right behind the house (and here they thought that would increase their property value). In desperation she consults a book of mgagic and conducts a ritual demanding her son be returned to her. That night, in the middle of a thunder storm, there’s a knock at the door…

But as everyone knows, people who come back from the dead (especially by ritual means) aren’t ever the same as they were when they left. Most of the story then becomes a cat and mouse game as Bobby chases and taunts his mother through their big house, and some skeletons come out of the closet.

One of the things going for this segment is an effective opening scene, an exercise in dialogueless exposition. Anthony enters from the garage, puts down her keys, looks sadly at photos of a boy, turns to the window and looks even more disconsolately at the crashing surf below. No dialogue necessary. In fact, there’s not a word spoken until she’s looked in a book of magic, scrawled a circle in chalk on her good wooden floors, lights candles, and finally begins the incantation. (I must note, however, that she mispronounced “tetragrammaton.”)

The other positive is the perfect timing in what is essentially an extended hide-and-seek sequence. The point is tension, and it’s maintained admirably.

Nitpick: I hate cars that won’t start for no reason. Hate ‘em.

Story 3 is “He Who Kills,” which is based on the Zuni fetish doll from Richard Matheson’s story “Prey” (the basis of the similar segment in the original). Police arrive at the scene of a double murder, both bodies slashed across the throat as well as having numerous wounds on the lower legs. The cops also discover the charred remains of a wooden figure in the oven. Perplexed, they take it to an ethnologist at the museum, Dr. Simpson (Anthony, with long dark hair again, but with glasses as well — you know, that means she’s “smart”).

The scene is set when Simpson is left alone in the museum with two friendly and ineffectual security guards. Her boyfriend, Dennis, leaves for the show without her, planning to return for her at eleven o’clock. However, those of us in the know realize that Dennis ain’t going to show up and save the day, because Dennis is played by Peter Keleghan, known to PBS watchers across the country as “Ranger Gord” from The Red Green Show. Nope, no help there.

Simpson starts scraping the ash off the doll and reading the menacing scroll that came with it, then leaves it in her lab to join the security guards for pizza. As soon as she leaves, the little doll works its jaw…

And presto, we’re in Charles Band territory. I mean, we’ve got a killer doll, we’ve got some cannon fodder essentially trapped on the premises… The only thing we’re missing is a group of teens staying overnight in the museum “for kicks,” and given that this is a half-hour segment there’s no need for them.

Unfortunately, ths Zuni fetish doll (ugly though it is) is its own worst enemy, in terms of horrific effect. For one thing, it sounds like a gremlin, or one of the goblins from Labyrinth. Not exactly fear-inspiring. For another thing, it shows a remarkable inability to dispatch a single ineffective scientist, even though it made short work of two armed security guards. (And to believe one of the killings, you have to suspend your disbelief mightily and accept the premise that, in the museum’s Cro-Magnon exhibit, the bow and arrow that the mannequin is holding are actually ready to fire, and it will only take a small doll chomp on the mannequin’s arm to fire the arrow.) On top of that, we’re somehow supposed to believe that a five hundred year old Zuni fetish doll, inhabited by the murderous soul of a Zuni warrior, knows to cut the telephone cords as soon as possible, and also understands the concept of an elevator.

In the final assessment, then, this is a fairly effective trilogy, as anthology movies go. Aside from the weaknesses discussed, there’s also an over-reliance on using the same techniques in each story to achieve tension (see the Notable Totables). But we’ve all certainly seen worse anthology movies, and having the solid performances of Lysette Anthony all the way through is certainly a leg up.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 10
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• tumbles down the stairs: 2
• visits to the cemetery: 2
• Zuni-cam: 3
• cut phone cords: 2
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0