Part of my usual unwind just before bed is to watch either short videos, such as on YouTube or to watch a feature film in sections. Trilogy of Terror is perfect for this, while it runs an hour and a half; the trilogy section of its title comes from that fact that it is comprised of three short films. Trilogy of Terror was a made-for-TV movie broadcast in 1975 and starring Karen Black in all three stories. If you were old enough, as I am, to have watched the original broadcast you undoubtedly remember one aspect of this program, the Zuni fetish Doll. The story of Amelia chased about her apartment by the murderous puppet seared itself into popular culture and more than twenty years later when Joss Whedon scripted the episode Hush of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, he was hoping to craft the shock and terror that the Zuni fetish doll created. Truly the Zuni fetish doll is an exciting and generally scary bit of filmmaking. Lacking the budget for any sort of animation the production masterfully made do with fast editing, in a time before one could edit on a computer, strong point of view camera work, and, an aspect I think that gets overlooked for just how much it added to the film, Walker Edmiston’s fantastic, and un-credited, vocal work as the inarticulate raging voice of the doll.

But what about the other two short film that make up the trilogy?

While I remembered the Zuni warrior chasing Karen Black around her apartment, as will anyone else who has seen Trilogy of Terror, the other stories are literally forgettable. One deals with a mousy professor and her student that becomes obsessed with her, drugging her and forcing her into a sexual relationship until the inevitable plot twist. While the second story is about two sisters, locked in a terrible cycle of hate and revenge that also ends with a twist that was telegraphed from over the horizon and surprised no one who had seen these sorts of stories before.

If it had not been for the Zuni fetish doll this made for TV movie would have disappeared from out collection consciousness along with the made for TV remake of  Double Indemnity or the series Casablanca.