Last night after the SDC, we went over to the home of our anonymous friends to watch movies. (Hi, anonymous friends! Thanks for hosting! Especially since you were a bit tired! Hope you enjoy the Shaq Soda!)
We wanted to honor the late great Richard Matheson, and ended up watching “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” and “Little Girl Lost“. (Speaking of “Nightmare”, yeah Shatner, yeah Matheson, but how many of you realize that was directed by Richard “Superman” Donner?)
Anyway, I don’t have a lot to say about these episodes: they are classics, and I was kind of distracted (for reasons I’ll probably talk about in the near future). But I bring this up because Lawrence’s original desire was to watch “Trilogy of Terror“. I don’t remember seeing this, or even hearing much about it, when it first aired, but apparently it is one of those things – like those TZ episodes – that people really really remember from their childhood. Especially the last segment, with Karen Black fighting off the evil doll: I get the impression that was nightmare fuel for a lot of kids in the 1970s.
It is odd what sticks with you. As I said, I don’t recall “Trilogy”, and my parents weren’t big on letting me watch “scary” stuff (though I do remember watching part of the first “Godfather” on TV with my dad, and that had big violence warnings all over it). There’s one episode of what I think was “Night Gallery” that sticks out for me: I only remember part of it, but it also involved an evil doll that killed the kindly (?) grandfather by setting the house on fire.
(I wonder what would have happened if my parents had let me watch this crap when I was a kid. Would I have grown up to be a rich and famous science fiction writer with groupies and a cocaine habit? Maybe my parents had the right idea.)
Anyway, my point (and I do have one) is that “Trilogy” isn’t on NetFlix. But you can watch the entire movie for free on YouTube.
You can also get a “special edition” DVD of “Trilogy of Terror”
(Already ordered it, Lawrence.)
(Obligatory reference to The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black here.)
(Did you know Karen Black blames this movie for “forcing her to accept many roles in B-grade horror films”? Yeah, neither did I.)
(You can also watch “Trilogy of Terror II” on YouTube, but I don’t have a strong opinion about whether you should. One the one hand, it has the same creepy Zuni fetish doll from the first movie, plus rats. On the other hand, it lacks Karen Black and Richard Matheson. You make the call.)