Monday, April 28, 2008

Day 28: Trilogy of Terror

According to the Netflix sleeve, "Trilogy of Terror" was a TV Movie that aired in the 70's, 1975 to be exact. The premise was just three short "scary" stories, with each story not related to the other. I kinda like movies like this, including "Creepshow" 1 & 2 and "Twilight Zone: The Movie". I think I like 'em cause it gets to the scary stuff right away without taking 45 minutes (or in exaggeration terms, 300 years) to explain every single thing that's gonna happen. While I like this, there is also a downside, which is cause they're working on a shorter timeframe, they have to spring stuff on us all suddenly.

A good example is the first story "Julie", which is about a nerdy looking college teacher and one of her students. The student, male, suddenly falls in love with the teacher and asks her out on a date. Julie, the teacher, goes "Oh I don't think-ok!". On said date, dude puts some kind of powdery drug in her drink. Let's think, this was '75, what drug could this have been? Maybe Spanish Fly? Anyway, the drug does it's thing and Julie passes out. Dude gets a hotel room and takes nude pictures of Julie, and probably does other things but we don't see cause this aired on TV and THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

The next day/week/whatever, Dude calls Julie, who gets a creepy vibe and decides to distance herself, and he more or less blackmails her into dating him. Here's one example on how the shorten time ruins it. Apparently we jump ahead to a month later and according to her hot roommate, Julie's been out late every night for the past month. And one scene, we see Dude pass Julie a note saying to go to his apartment, cause he's having friends over. NONE of this is explained. Is he trickin' her out, like the ending of "Requiem For A Dream"? (ASS TO ASS!) Is she just dancing all nerdy? It's not explained and this is one thing I wouldn't mind having explained.

And the second bad thing is we have to wrap up the story and it has to happen NOW GOD DAMMIT NOW!!!! So we see Julie at Dude's house and he's walking around all cocky with his shirt open and suddenly Julie just gets up and is like "Ok, I'm done" and reveals that she has weird mind powers and she made Dude fall in love and do all this unseen freaky shit to her WITH HER MIND!!! Then, WITH HER MIND, she kills him. After buring his place and it being declared an accident, she starts anew with another student.

Next story is really just odd and not really that scary. Well, I suppose the first one wasn't scary, just mildly creepy. This one isn't even creepy. And you can forsee the whole thing from the first 5 minutes. We focus on a uptight nerdy chick stuck in the 1800's, or is Amish it wasn't made too clear, who complains about her slutty "sister" and how she's evil and the devil and stuff. Nerdy Chick calls a doctor, played by Punky Brewster's Dad (And the Commandant in Police Academy) and complains about her "sister" to him, and he says he'll be over first thing tomorrow.

Tomorrow we meet the "sister" who is in fact slutty. She's hitting on the doctor, who's like "You are gonna ruin yourself" and other stuff. Slutty Chick is like "Get out!" and she starts pounding on a door saying "Come out Geeky Sister!" but we dont' see Geeky Sister. Gee...I wonder!

Well...yes. Geeky Chick and Slutty Chick is the same person. Geeky Chick (or maybe Slutty Chick, who know?) has multiple personalites and the doctor knows this. Apparently, no one else does cause while being Slutty Chick, she broke some random kid's doll and the kid said it was Nerdy Chick's sister. I wonder if it's that much of a secret or the entire town plays along. Hm.

Anyway, Nerdy Chick decides to kill Slutty Chick using voodoo but since they're the same person, she dies, the end. Oh and while she was Slutty Chick, she got it on with her father. Now The End.

Now it's time for the most famous story from this TV movie, probably because those first two sucked so damn hard. It features a chick (notcing a theme here? I'll explain in a minute) buying some possessed doll, the doll comes to life, and starts attacking the shit out of her. That is pretty much the whole thing, but it is the coolest out of the three cause, like I mentioned, it doesn't suck ass. Eventually, the chick throws the doll into the oven with her steak (Yum steak) and since the "body" is now burnt, the soul must go into something so it goes...INTO THE STEAK!! AHH THE STEAK HAS A KNIFE AND IT'S GONNA POUR A-1 SAUCE ALL OVER YOU!!!

Ok no. That would've been ultra cool. Instead it possesses chick and it's about to attack her boyfriend. The end.

Ok so, the reason all three involve chicks is cause all three feature the same actress, Karen Black, who I always get confused with Karen Allen, even though they really don't look or act the same. This made story 1 and 2 weirder cause she's suppose to be nerdy looking in both and it looks like they didn't try too hard to distiguish the two characters. Both had hair in a bun. Both wore glasses. Both dressed like they were from another time period. I'm willing to bet this confused the people in the '70's.

"Dude, it's the same chick! She's gonna kill Punky Brewster's Dad with her mind!!"
"Dude, Punky Brewster won't be around for another 7 years or so."
"Oh...dude."

Anyway, just skip to the third story, unless you wanna see Karen Black's clevage, which she shows to Punky Brewster's Dad in Story 2. Then just look at that and go to the third story. I want to go on and on about why the first story is dumb and how many plotholes it has but it might take too long...

Aw fuck it.

Ok, so the entire time, Julie planned EVERYTHING with her psychic ablilities, including the drugging part. So she thought it'd be a good idea to get druged and actually knocked out just so she could have fun with her latest boy toy? And how is it she hasn't gotten caught yet? Did she just psyhically kill any cops or investigators that asked her any question?

"Julie, we wanna know how you know-"
*Mind power*
"Ack, my brain just exploded."

Like I said, there's an upside and a downside to these short anthology movies.


Story 1:


Story 2:


Story 3:

-Jason

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