Thursday, March 12, 2009
netflixed
I've in the past considered myself an afficionado of bad horror films--but I'd never seen Trilogy of Terror. This is near the summit of bad horror. There are actually some terrifying things about this flick: Karen Black's performances, William Nolan's dialogue, and the after-school special production values.* What was Richard Matheson thinking? He penned some good Twilight Zone episodes, and the source material for two craptacularly entertaining movies I loved as a child: The Omega Man and The Incredible Shrinking Man.
The stories here seem yanked from his sock drawer (but no! at least one was published in Playboy).
Matheson likely read the '60s equivalent of Freud for Dummies before scribbling these tawdry tales. Did anyone not see through the second installment within two minutes?
*Oh, and the seventies decor in that Zuni Fetish Doll-infested kitchen? Truly terrifying!
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Fasten your seatbelts, friends, we're about to get some deep-dish Seventies trivia . . .
Trilogy of Terror was originally part of a bargain-basement series called ABC Movie of the Week. They were ninety-minute productions, with production values not much higher than a typical TV series of the time. That's why it looks like something your local high school would be ashamed to put on for its senior class musical.
Even so, some decent stuff cropped up now and again. I can still remember the head-snapping thrill of seeing Duel for the first time and being more focused on the screenwriter, Richard Matheson, than the director, some young pup named Spielberg.
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