By Dan Jardine
And so, in 1975 Dan Curtis, the writer/director of Dark Shadows and Night Stalker (my favorite Darrin McGavin vehicle, A Christmas Story notwithstanding) joined forces with writers William F. Nolan (Logan's Run) and Richard Matheson (The Twilight Zone, Duel) and star Karen Black, one of the quirkiest and sexiest actresses of the 70s, on Trilogy of Terror (Dark Sky Films), a triptych of made-for-TV horror tales. If you decide to give this one a look, I can save you a bit of time -- about 50 minutes of the 76 minute running time, to be exact. Just ignore chapters one and two and skip to the third and final story. You’ll thank me later.
For argument's sake, let’s say you decide to watch ‘em all. What do you have in store? Well, the first tale is titled "Julie." Black stars opposite her husband at the time, Robert “Skip” Burton (apparently, there was a time when grown men allowed themselves to be called Skip), who plays a randy college student scheming to bed his homely English professor. The whole thing put me in mind of Van Halen’s "Hot for Teacher" -- not in a good way, but in that it had me pining for the subtle wit and stylish delivery of David Lee Roth; which is another way of saying that while "Julie" might have played back in 1975, in the post-date-rape-drug/Mary Kay Letourneau world, the whole thing comes off as some sorta grim and banal postmodernist joke.
Where it takes at least 10 minutes to guess the impending twist in "Julie," the second episode, "Millicent and Theresa," tips its hand so clumsily that even Mr. Magoo would be able to read these cards. Black plays both of the titular characters, two feuding sisters of polar opposite personalities. Theresa is an Oedipal nightmare, a red-lipsticked harlot who may have killed her own mother to have sole claim on her father’s affections, while Millicent is a prude who is puckered up tighter than Pat Robertson’s orifices at a GLAAD fundraiser. There's little to recommend Julie beyond the gimmicky appeal of watching Black throw herself into these two parts, and even that's not enough. The story’s ability to engage us rests entirely upon Black’s faculty to sell us on these characterizations, and while she charismatic, her technical skills are far from staggering, and in this segment, that lack is on full display. These first two segments are the sort of tales that might have been popular in the era of Poe and Hawthorne, and only for those who found those masters' works too challenging. They seem oddly hamstrung; they're unwilling or unable to tap into established, efficient horror conventions, and absent such effort, both stories seem bland and forgettable. 
But just when you're ready to surrender all hope, along comes the third and final chapter, in which Black and her collaborators finally put it all together. "Amelia" is the story of a fragile and repressed woman, the victim of an overbearing mother trying to cut the figurative cord. To Black’s credit, she is able to establish this struggle immediately, in a brief phone call to her mother in which all the pertinent information is conveyed through Black’s reactions to her mother’s unseen, unheard yet palpable browbeating. As Amelia tries to break a date with her mother so she can spend the night with her new boyfriend on his birthday, her mother ladles on the guilt, reducing her apparently happy and confident daughter to a puddle of insecurities and doubts.
During this conversation, Curtis displays Amelia’s gift to her beau in the foreground: a Zuni hunting fetish doll, a particularly nasty-looking wood-carved devil with a jagged set of teeth and a vicious snarl on his face. My understanding is that these fetishes are intended to guarantee a successful hunt, but the way Curtis shoots the stalking sequences -- setting his camera at crotch level throughout the second half of the episode -- the fetish seems more clearly sexual in nature. The sexual myths of large African men imposing themselves on harmless or hapless (but secretly excited) white women is given an interesting twist here; the pygmy-esque doll, with his razor sharp teeth and maniacal war cry, proves, in an inverted Mandingo sort of way, a formidable foe for the reticent Amelia. Though Amelia is theoretically our surrogate, when the doll goes on the hunt, the camera takes its point-of-view, and when the bathrobed Amelia falls to the floor, the camera swoops in on her with gynecological precision. 
The threat of sexual invasion is explicit, incessant and pretty bloody terrifying. Throughout this segment, Curtis does an admirable job of building suspense. Once he establishes the doll's potential for menace, he literally drops it out of sight, creating tremendous unease and discomfort as we await his inevitable attack. And when the warrior does attack, its weird guttural scream -- so eerily anticipatory of the Tracy Flick battle cry in Election -- is an undeniably effective bit of audio trickery. This is one fetish that you are not going to be able to ignore.
In the end, Amelia’s attempt to separate from her mother and start a new life that includes a career and a boyfriend unleashes an Electral rage and long-suppressed sexuality. In fact, all three stories have a vaguely Victorian and distinctly Freudian aura about them, particularly in their treatment of female repression. As a result, Black is a logical choice to pull a Peter Sellers (though such a comparison certainly flatters Black, who is at best a b-minus level actress to Sellers’ a-plus) and play four different roles in three tales. She has a simmering sexuality lurking just beneath the surface, and a B-movie actress's willingness to risk looking ridiculous; and while it's true that Black will never be mistaken for Meryl Streep, such acting chops are rarely required here. While the first two parts of this "thrillergy" do not stand the test of time particularly well, and "Amelia" alone proves worthy of our attention, it's fun to see an appealing and dynamic actress give herself over to a project with such enthusiasm and lack of self-consciousness.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Living doll: Karen Black and Trilogy of Terror
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15 comments:
Aren't these three movies what Jonathan Couette said he was going to sample and remix for his next project?
Well, I've long been an advocate of the idea that, if you simply MUST do a remake, rather than remaking the good movies, filmmakers should see if they can mediocrities watchable. If nothing else, it would be an interesting film school exercise to see if it is possible to make Julie and Therese & Millicent relevant works. However, Amelia, even though it has its fair share of flaws and deficiencies, should be left as is.
The third segment of this anthology definitely passes the Horror Masterpiece test -- which is to say, it contains images or situations that contaminate otherwise mundane everyday actions, so you can't do them without thinking of the work and being creeped out. ("Psycho" with showers, "Jaws" with beaches, "Rosemary's Baby" and "It's Alive" with pregnancy, etc.) I saw this for the first time when I was about 10, and for years after that, there were times when I'd be in a bathroom with the door closed and half expect that Zuni warrior's knife to jab under the door and rake back and forth.
Dan: Just curious, does the Dark Sky DVD version of "Trilogy" give any indication of which writer (Nolan or Matheson) was responsible for which segment?
Yup. In the dvd's audio commentary, which features Karen Black and William Nolan, Nolan only participates in the first two segments, and then bows out and allows Black the stage to herself for "Amelia" (which she grabs, with relish on her hot dog, mixed metaphorically-speaking) because "Amelia" wasn't his baby. Matheson, who is (like Nolan) still alive and very active despite having past his 80th year, wrote the stories that all three films were based on, but Nolan wrote the teleplay for "Julie" as well as "Millicent and Therese." As for "Amelia," Matheson wrote both the story "Prey" which it is based upon, and the teleplay that Curtis eventually shot. Black, however, claims credit for writing the important and revealing monologue with dear old mama that kicks off the film.
Matheson also wrote the novel Stir of Echoes, a David Koepp/Kevin Bacon film from a few years back, somewhat reminiscent of The Dead Zone, a film I liked quite a bit more than my fellow critics. The old fellow's still got it.
I must have seen it when I was 9 or so. No memory of the first two stories, but that doll has stuck with me- and I remember the creeped-out fascination I had; a lot like "talking Tina"-the little doll who killed Telly Savales on an episode of "Twilight Zone."
Interestingly enough, I only saw these once, both when I was a kid.
Yet I thought nothing of the Chucky flicks.
Being a little older than you, I saw these when I was a teenager, in full lust mode for Ms. Black, so my appreciation for the final story has less to do with the violent horror aspect and more to do with the sexual component. The camera angles are positively perverse, particularly when the fetish is on the hunt--it damn near runs right up her bathrobe (and Black claims she wore nothing beneath that robe, which makes matters all the worse for yers truly pervert-wise); I can't imagine them sneaking it past the censors on regular old network tv these days.
Good stuff on "Trilogy" and Matheson at Zombos Closet of Horror.
Jeremiah Kipp makes a pretty compelling case for the defense as well:
http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=2318
Ha! I was 10 or 11 years old when Trilogy aired. In all the time that's passed since then, I've only met one person who remembered it. If it hadn't been for him, I would have thought I'd dreamt it. No doubts now!
"My sister is eeeevil."
Yes, the "Amelia" section of "Trilogy of Terror" is a classic.
However, I can't help but wonder if Richard Matheson would be all that flattered by what was done to his novel "Stir of Echoes." And let's face it, Dan. The main reason that movie got such bad reviews had more than a little to do with the obvious parallels that movie had with another *cough* better *cough* film dealing with a little boy who sees dead people. The one with Toni Collete and M. Night Whatshisname...
Ah, TK, that's where we differ. I think Stir of Echoes stands up a bit better than Sixth Sense, whose gimmicky ending doesn't replay particularly well.
But I recognize that I'm in the distinct minority here.
oh, man. I still think of that little monster when I lay alone and leave my hand over the edge of the bed. Probably cuz' I saw it at such an impressionable age. Which helped me make it through the first two, I suppose. there may have been vcrs at the time, but we wouldn't own one for years.
I remember taking the Universal Studio Tour back in 1976 or 77 and although the tour back them wasn't as "amusementesque" as it is today, they did have a fair amount of film and television memorabilia on display. One place located on the upper level of the lot was dedicated to Monsters & Horror movies. I'll never forget see the maquettes of the transforming Dirk Benedict from the film "Ssssss" or the the many faces of James Cagney as Lon Chaney in "Man of a Thousand Faces." Yet, as I rounded the corner in this building the chills went up my spine when I layed my eyes on the "African Fetish Doll suspended in air inside a plastic display in an all black room but for the TV playing clips from the film "Trilogy of Terror." That memory still gives me the chills to this day.
I ran across this on IMDB while searching for "T.O.T." and I thought you drive-in fans mught get a kick out of it:
Trivia for
Trilogy of Terror (1975) (TV)
During the "Julie" segment, a drive-in theater can be seen showing the movie "The Night Stalker". This is an in-joke reference to director Dan Curtis's TV movie The Night Stalker (1972) (TV).
"Amelia" must have been made to wreak havoc on the pre-teen psyche. Add another 10-years-old-or-under to the club (I was 8 or 9 when the film aired). I was too young to read any twisted sexual undertones in the film, but it sure scared me senseless.
All these years, I've mistakenly thought Black was Barbara Eden, unless Eden also did an "evil doll" teleflick (this is the one were she throws the doll in the oven, right?).
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