From the Archives: DVD Review: Trilogy of Terror

This review was originally published on Earcandymag.com in 2006. R.I.P. Karen Black.



Made for TV movies from the 1970s were fertile ground for schlock, horror and the occasional eccentric masterpiece. From Linda Blair being raped with a broom handle in Born Innocent to Bad Ronald to occult movies like Satan's School For Girls and Race With the Devil, made for TV movies have earned a fond place in the hearts of pop culture geeks.

One of the most notorious made for TV horror movies wasn't a full film, but the last story in Trilogy Of Terror, a 1975 film produced by Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis and starring quirky, underrated screen icon Karen Black. Ms. Black has appeared in some legendary films (Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby, Easy Rider), but one of her most offbeat and gripping roles co-starred a wild-eyed Zuni fetish doll, not an actor.

The first two segments of Trilogy of Terror dim by comparison to the final one. The introductory vignette, Julie, casts Black as a prim and proper college English teacher who has an affair with one of her students, (played by Robert Burton, Black's husband at the time.) For most of the story, the student is a blackmailing date rapist and Julie is the victim, but there's a macabre twist at the end.

Millicent and Therese features Black in a dual role as sisters. The repressed Millicent chronicles the sins of evil, slutty sister Therese in her diary. The physical transformation Black achieves as Millicent is amazing, one of the most extreme examples of the spinster ever committed to film. These episodes, written by William Nolan, who later co-wrote Burnt Offerings, (which also starred Black), are taut but predictable psychological horror.

While both of these stories were passable entertainment in 1975, they wouldn't even merit a blink now. The final story in the trilogy, adapted for the screen by Richard Matheson from his story, Prey, is the crème de la crème of made for TV horror, and one of Black's most infamous roles. Amelia begins with Black on the phone with her annoying mother, describing a Zuni fetish doll she's just bought for her anthropologist boyfriend. And this is one angry, fugly doll. I doubt all the CGI experts at today's studios could conjure up such a demonic doll, even with all the technical shortcuts at their disposal. A modern-day icon like Chuckie pales in comparison to our Zuni friend. The tiny terror, equipped with a spear and razor-sharp teeth, comes with a scroll that warns the warrior's soul will escape if the chain around its waist is removed. You guessed it, Amelia walks away for a minute and when she returns the chain has fallen off and the doll is nowhere to be found. It reappears reanimated and ready to slice and dice hapless Amelia. The manic fight between Amelia and the doll that follows is one of the most frightening sequences in any horror film released in the 1970s. Hell, ask anyone who watched Trilogy Of Terror when it was first broadcast and they'll tell you about the sleepless night that followed. The chilling final shot, where Amelia has assumed the spirit-and the sharp-toothed pose-of the Zuni doll as she waits for her mother to arrive, was not in the original script. In the featurette, Three Colors Black, we learn that Black suggested the ending, fangs and all. An interview with writer Richard Matheson and a full audio commentary track for the film by Black and William F. Nolan are included as special features.

More Made for TV Madness from the '70s - Nightmare in Badham County

Nightmare in Badham County

ABC TV movie

100 minutes

Original Airdate May 11, 1976.

Nightmare in Badham County is a disturbing and surprisingly well-made TV movie, first broadcast on ABC in 1976. Equal parts thriller, social commentary and exploitation flick, Badham County had more going for it than sleaze and T & A. It. featured compelling lead actresses, a stable of well-loved TV stars moonlighting as sleazy villains and a gritty, unsettling ambiance.

UCLA coeds Diane Emery (Lynne Moody) and Kathy Phillips (Deborah Raffin) are driving cross country when their car breaks down in  the Deep South. A kindly old African-American man stops to help them, but before they can drive off with a repaired tire, racist Sheriff Danen (Chuck Connors) drives past. The fact that Diane is black and Kathy is white doesn’t sit well with Danen. That’s when the nightmare begins.  The corrupt sheriff has the girls take in their car for some unnecessary repairs, and through help from a sleazy gas station attendant and a corrupt judge; the girls are sentenced to 30 days hard labor at a hellish prison camp.

Diane and Kathy are separated in the camp, which divides barracks by race.  Kathy befriends a young girl Emmeline ( Kim Wilson ) who  later meets  a bad end at the hands of sleazy Superintendent  Dancer (Robert Reed). Like the villainous sheriff,  Dancer gets away with his evil deeds due to political connections. Both Reed and Connors went on to play similarly despicable characters in the mini-series Roots.

The producers tacked on nude scenes and more explicit violence to release the film overseas. Badham County became such a cult hit in China that Raffin visited the country and became an unofficial Goodwill Ambassador for Hollywood. She helped arrange for Chinese films to be shown in America and vice versa.  

The tension throughout Badham County never abates. The girls attempt to escape or reach someone on the outside several times, but everyone in town is in cahoots with (or afraid of) the town’s crooked lawmen and polticos.

Diane makes one particularly daring attempt to escape with nail-biting results for the viewer.  Jo Heims’ script is full of twists and turns befitting a more “respectable” subject.  Director John Llewellyn Moxey lends the same foreboding air to Badham County as he did to his more famous films Horror Hotel and Night Stalker.

In the politically incorrect 1970s , TV movies didn’t  resolve all storylines in a neat little bow, and even some sympathetic lead characters suffered grim fates. Nightmare in Badham County was no exception.  There’s a glimmer of hope at the end, but not without tragedy.

While not the sleaziest of the women in chains genre, it does have its moments. A catfight out in the fields ends up with a water hose turned on the prisoners and a few of the girls are ogled as they serve drinks to the rich townsfolk at an outdoor party. Tina Louise, as nasty prison guard Greer, is the antithesis of Gilligan Island’s glamorous Ginger. She shows no mercy to any of the girls, stripping down a prisoner and beating her during a bed check. The other female guards Dulcie (Fionnula Flanagan) and Smitty (Lana Wood), are just as vicious. Smitty coerces a frail inmate into sex in. exchange for food in one scene. This isn’t all  modern day, airbrushed pseudo-lesbian erotica – it’s really grim,  more frightening  than titillating. 

Raffin was nominated for an Emmy for her work.I thought Moody gave the better performance - much more subtle and realistic. Raffin overacted quite a bit, especially near the end of the film.

A watchable combination of story and sleaze, Nightmare in Badham County is one of many lost made for TV gems from the 1970s. You can buy Nightmare as part of the 8-Movie Pack Man-Cave at Amazon. 

The uncut version (NSFW) is available on YouTube

You Can't Get it on DVD, Made for TV Edition: House on Greenapple Road

The Quinn Martin produced House on Greenapple Road demonstrates three of the made for TV genre’s strong points at their finest. - great acting, tight script and cinematography that adds to the emotional as well as visceral quality of the story.  

Greenapple Road is a detective thriller that will keep you riveted to the screen because you want to find out “who done it.” It will keep you and your friends debating the murderer’s identity throughout the entire movie – and there’s a good chance you’ll keep changing your mind a few times during the film.

In The House on Greenapple Road, the search for a missing mother and housewife in a small California town called Santa Luisa exposes an extramarital affair, doomed love and a woman’s search for eternal youth. The housewife in question, Marian Ord, is played by Psycho star Janet Leigh. Marian's character doesn’t do much for most of the film, which is told in flashback. She wears a one-piece bathing suit, calls out her disrespectful lovers, and looks doe-eyed into the camera. Marian isn't the stereotypical promiscuous housewife, as her affairs never seem to bring her much joy or relieve her fear of getting older.

The film begins with Marian’s daughter ( the Brady Bunch’s Eve Plumb) returning home after a day at school to find no sign of her mom and one messed-up, bloody kitchen. She runs next door to seek comfort with her Aunt Leona  (Julie Harris).

Detective Dan August (Christopher George) and his partner Charles Wiltenz (Keenan Wynn) arrive on the scene. The murder scene has a lotta blood for a 1970 movie. August and Wiltenz even discuss the number of pints of blood in the human body, surmising that no one could have survived such a brutal attack. The detectives schlep around the kitchen procuring evidence without latex gloves. Watch out for those bloody pieces of china! Cops didn’t handle crime scenes delicately circa 1970, on film or in real life.

After a little snooping around in the bedroom, August finds some photos of Marian’s paramours hidden under a dresser drawer. And so the murder investigation begins, with Marian’s secret lovers and her long-suffering husband as the primary suspects. 

There’s the lifeguard turned gas station attendant (Burr DeBenning), who  plays Benjamin to Marion’s Mrs. Robinson, the rich sports club bigwig (William Windom) and his suspicious wife (Joanne Linville),  the leader of a New Age type church, and a  locally-infamous con artist (Peter Mark Richman), who has previously  crossed paths with Detective August.

Her milquetoast husband George (Tim O’ Connor), a salesman, is away most of the time, leaving Marian to seek affection elsewhere. George is the most obvious suspect to everyone except August, who sees much more than a case of cuckolded husband and cheating wife. When one of his alibis doesn’t check out, the investigation spins in a new direction. 

August and Wilteenz encounter a salty old sailor (Paul Fix) and a pot-smoking receptionist played by Christopher George’s wife, billed here as Lynda-Day. After retrieving Day’s character at a pot-smoking party at Big Bear, Wynn’s character, comments “The drive back took 3 hours and she’s still lit up.” (That musta been some good grass!) Greenapple’s cast included Walter Pidgeon as Santa Luisa’s mayor, and Ed Asner as a publicity hungry Sheriff who is only interested in apprehending the murderer quickly, with or without sufficient evidence. 

Based on a novel by Harold R. Daniels, Greenapple Road was so well-received it spawned the short-lived Dan August TV series. The 1970-71 CBS series starred Burt Reynolds, since George was too busy with other projects at the time. 

The few violent scenes in Greenapple Road are intense for a 1970 made for TV movie. Some sources say the  film was originally shot as a theatrical feature, so that may explain some of the graphic subject matter. Although a tightly-woven detective thriller, the movie has little blips dealing with racism, sexual hypocrisy and child predators.

 House on Greenapple Road is available on You Tube, and from a few Intenet sellers of rare videos.  A nail-biting whodunit with many surprise twists and turns, it t will keep you hooked until the final scene. House on Greenapple Road was broadcast as an ABC Movie of the Week on January 11th, 1970.

You Can't Get It on DVD : Made for TV Edition : The Neon Ceiling

Most made for TV movies in the early 1970s were either kooky romances ( The Feminist and the Fuzz, The Girl Who Came Gift Wrapped), or horror/suspense (Trilogy of Terror, When a Stranger Calls) , but an occasional slice of life drama/social commentary made its way onto the ABC Movie of the Week. The Neon Ceiling, a drama/romance about a woman escaping a bad marriage, starred Lee Grant and Gig Young and received good reviews when it was broadcast in 1971.

Carrie Miller (Lee Grant) is a sensitive, free-spirited housewife married to a humorless dentist (William Smithers). Their precocious 12 year old daughter Paula (Denise Nickerson) carries around a book on relationship advice for married couples, and is constantly quoting it and asking questions far too advanced for her tender years. Her father is able to deal with Paula’s rambunctious attitude, but not her frail mother, who is unable to keep her mind on cooking dinner properly, much less sparring with a smart-mouthed pre-teen.  Her husband pours out his dissatisfaction about their marriage to Carrie one night, but concludes, “I can’t divorce you. You don’t know how to take care of yourself.”

After the Doctor falls asleep, Carrie wakes Paula up, and they get in the car and ride out into the desert, toward no destination in particular. Later in the film, we discover that this isn’t the first time Carrie and Paula have taken an impromptu road trip.  Away from the confines of suburbia, mother and daughter talk a lot more, though it’s apparent that Paula’s strong will and Carrie’s “hothouse flower” personality don’t mesh. Carrie’s persona is similar to that of Mabel in Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence, although Carrie stifles her pain rather than act out as Mabel does. 

The car sputters out by desert diner/filling station inhabited by   Jones (Gig Young), a grizzled loner who lets Carrie & Paula take up residence in the diner. (He sleeps in a trailer on the property.) The trio become friends/verbal sparring partners. Nickerson (who later went on to play Violet in Willy Wonka) steals the movie in the pivotal role as Paula. Jones teaches her how to drive his truck, and she zooms all over the property while Jones and Carrie watch. The adults begin a friendship that slowly develops into something deeper, as the outgoing Jones draws Carrie out of her shell.

The neon ceiling referred to in the title is a collection of road signs and neon art  in the diner basement. Jones has collected and fashioned these signs through the years. Carrie and Paula are enchanted by the neon, and stay in the desert for several weeks. Paula even talks the way into working as a waitress in the diner while her mother develops a joy for living she lacked back home.

Directed by Frank Pierson ( who wrote Dog Day Afternoon and Cool Hand Luke ) and written by Carol Sobieski based on one of her short stories, The Neon Ceiling is one of those blink and you miss it movies that lives only in the memory of those who watched it in its initial TV run. Viewers have fond, nostalgic memories of it; there are several positive user reviews on IMDB from mostly female viewers who remember it vividly from its original airing. That’s unusual for a TV movie that hasn’t been screened anywhere (to my knowledge) since the early 1970s.

Lee Grant won an Emmy for her portrayal of Carrie Miller. Gig Young was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Single Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, and the film was also nominated for Best Editing and Cinematography. The Neon Ceiling is a good time capsule of the social and moral climate of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.  Some the dialogue is wince-worthy in 2012, though, such as the scene where a family doctor wonders why Carrie and her hubby only have one child. The film isn’t a good candidate for DVD release, but it’s currently available on YouTube (see video below), along with other ABC Movies of the Week.