Nightmares (1983)

Like the majority of these types of 'episodic' anthology films, "Nightmares" features some expected hit-and-miss material, but, as a whole, it's up there with one of the more solid ones I've seen.

First up was "Terror in Topanga", where an escaped lunatic is offing the residents of a coastal community. Despite potential danger, a woman slips away from her family for a desperate late night cigarette run, only to stumble upon said danger...

Next is "The Bishop of Battle" - starring Emilio Estevez as a avid gamer/arcade hustler who is obsessed with making it to the allegedly impossible 13th level of a shooter game. After breaking into his arcade hangout past closing, he finds out what this unknown stage of the game has in store for those who make it there.

Then there's "The Benediction" about a priest who loses his faith and decides to quit and move away from his rural U.S./Mexico boarder town, but is intervened by a mysterious, Hellish black pick-up truck that keeps attacking him out on a desolate stretch of desert road.

Finally, "Night of the Rat" concerns a family who seems to have a vermin problem. Turns out they are infested with a legendary uber-rat and it's pissed...

The first two segments are the best, with the third being a decent "Duel" ('71) knock-off and the fourth one not impressing me all that much. "Night of the Rat" just seemed like the slowest of the bunch and, honestly, the superimposed rat effect was really dated looking and took away from the climax for me, I'm sorry to say. The arcade one is easily the best of the four (good enough that the dated effects of THAT one didn't phase me much...), being exceptionally entertaining and the opening segment is a cool 'take' on a familiar urban legend. Maybe they could've used some kind of wrap-around story to kinda tie these together a bit, but overall "Nightmares" is an enjoyable quartet of horror stories.

German Angst (2015)

I was very much into checking out "German Angst" since hearing about the crowd-funding campaign for it a while back (my broke ass didn't contribute, I'm sorry to say...) and after finally getting around to checking it out, I've got mixed feelings. I guess I was just expecting something a bit... different, overall.

The first segment - titled "Final Girl" and directed by Jörg Buttgereit (of "Nekromantik" fame...) - involves a young woman in her apartment who provides voice-over information pertaining to the habits of guinea pigs, of which she has two as pets. She has breakfast while listening to the details of a brutal crime on the radio, before it is revealed that she has a bound man tied to a bed in the other room. She proceeds to castrate him while her voice-over describes how guinea pigs react to castration. Eventually, she begins mutilating the guy with an electric turkey knife...

Next is "Make a Wish", from Michael Kosakowski - about a young deaf couple who go exploring in an abandoned building. Via, sign language, the guy explains the origin of a medallion he's giving her that apparently has the power to allow the person holding it to swap bodies with someone else, which, according to his story (told through a flash-back...), allowed his grandmother to escape the Nazis. Before he can finish his story, however, they are coincidentally interrupted by a group of neo-Nazis who, upon discovering that the couple is Polish, begin brutally assaulting them. That is, until the boyfriend uses the 'magic' medallion to switch bodies with the lead skinhead. From there, the goons unknowingly begin torturing their compatriot.

The last story - "Alraune", directed by Andreas Marschall - is about a photographer who arranges to meet up with a chick he came across online. As they're about to hook up in the restroom of a nightclub, she is led away by some guys as the photographer follows. It takes him to an apartment that houses some weird secret society that he wants to get into in order to get to the chick. He gets more than he bargains for when he's granted admission and finds that they're running some kind of weird, demonic sex ritual thing where you're tied down and fucked by a sexy monster. He becomes addicted to this psychotropic 'sensation' and it leads him down a bad road, so to speak...

First and foremost, I was really disappointed with Buttgereit's contribution to this anthology. "Final Girl" is by far the weakest "story" (it's not even a story...) with an off-screen castration and an all too abrupt ending. I feel like the director was really phoning it in on this one and he was the one I, personally, was the most excited to see contribute to this film.

I enjoyed the second entry, and may even call it the best of the three. There's a good deal of violence and a pretty downer ending, which I liked, but it still wasn't all that great.

The final part provided a good enough story, but still felt a bit disjointed. Kinda felt familiar, like a "Tales from the Crypt" episode or something, but I'd say it had the most solid performances of the film and is shot very well. I wasn't all that blown away by it, though.

In all, "German Angst" is an alright anthology. Perhaps I was just expecting something a bit different - maybe something a bit more 'graphic' and 'extreme', considering it's from "Germany's most shocking directors". Instead, I found it significantly tamer and more 'stylish' than I would've thought, which isn't bad. All three shorts are well shot and acted and two out of the three have decent enough stories, but just didn't dole out the crazy gore I was expecting. I would say "German Angst" is just okay.

Tales of Halloween (2015)

"Tales of Halloween" is a strange and somewhat entertaining holiday anthology - the second one I've seen recently, following "A Christmas Horror Story". It's not quite up to snuff with that one or the 'top dog' of Halloween horror anthologies, "Trick 'r Treat", but it's not BAD.

You got ten stories all taking place on All Hallows' Eve - most of which are centered around a revenge theme. There's a ghoulish entity that rips the eaten candy from peoples stomachs, Satan, himself, presumably taking a trick-or-treater out on a crime spree, some people being terrorized by a gang of killer trick-or-treaters and a kid calling upon a demon to take care of some bullies that killed his parents. Lucky McKee has one of the more 'odd' segments about a witch dressing her wimpy-ass husband up as Hansel and handing out candy - followed up by a guys' Halloween decorations being one-upped by the headbanger neighbors, a "Friday the 13th"/"Evil Dead" combo-spoof involving UFOs and an evil Jack-o-lantern taking over the town...

For the most part this one is a straight-up horror-comedy, though its got a decent amount of gore and some fairly enjoyable, tongue-in-cheek moments if you're down for shutting your brain off for a bit. My one problem was how they threw in all the story titles during the opening credits, which didn't make much sense to me seeing as how it was nearly impossible to remember them (and who wrote/directed them...) once the story came around. In all, "Tales of Halloween" is no genre 'classic', but if you're up for something dumb it's worth a watch.

A Christmas Horror Story (2015)

"A Christmas Horror Story" is essentially the Yuletide equivalent of 2007's Halloween anthology, "Trick 'r Treat" - featuring a series of interwoven holiday-themed horror stories. I'd say both films are definitely on par with one another, in terms of quality. They're both exceptionally entertaining.

Five stories are intertwined, simultaneously (as opposed to the more episodic movies of this ilk...) - with William Shatner as a radio DJ, acting as the wrap-around, more or less. As he's working and boozing it up during Christmas, some teens sneak into the basement of their high school - which used to be a convent-turned murder scene - to shoot a documentary. A cop who was on the scene of these murders has his young son swapped out with an evil changeling while trespassing on a demon-hoarders land, while another family is pursued by a Krampus and Santa Claus battles 'infected' zombie elves at the North Pole...

Like it's aforementioned counterpart, "Trick 'r Treat", "A Christmas Horror Story" goes about capturing the 'feel' of it's respective holiday considerably well. All of the stories are enjoyable - the best, I'd say, being a toss up between the changeling one and Santa Claus, mainly for the clever 'twist' attached to the latter. There's some gory moments, some silly ones involving crazed, self-mutilating elves and a few fairly creepy parts as well. It's got it's bases covered pretty well. Overall, "A Christmas Horror Story" is a surprisingly fun and "festive" movie that I could easily see becoming a genre favorite around the Xmas season. Recommended.

Screams of a Winter Night (1979)

Extremely unmemorable 'drive-in' anthology bore-fest.

A van-load of some truly unfuckable 20-something's drive up to a vacation home out in the woods where they elect to sit around and tell campfire stories. The first one is about a creature that stalks a stranded couple out in the woods. The next on concerns some college kids staying in a haunted asylum as a frat initiation and the third is about a chick who defends herself from a date rape, via stabbing, and goes on to stab to death her roommate for borrowing her shawl...

None of the stories are remotely imaginative or have any kind of clever or creepy pay-off while the bland 'wrap-around' material pretty much takes up the majority of the movie, with such riveting discussions as; 'who is going to run an errand for more lamp oil?' and, 'who is paying for said lamp oil?' and, of course, 'John should really stop scaring the girls'. And then the house implodes... Picking the best segment from this flick is difficult, as they were all so fucking tedious that, with each one, I found myself having a hard time focusing due to the terribly slow pacing. Just avoid this one.

Destricted (2006)

My only real interest in checking this out was for the contributions from Larry Clark and Gaspar Noé - two film-makers responsible for past work I hold in rather high regard. "Destricted" is a collection of 'arthouse'-porno shorts that's supposedly meant to 'blur that line' between 'art' and smut. For the most part, it's about as pretentious as it sounds. I guess I'll just give a brief run-down on each film. Note - the U.S. version I have is different (and slightly longer...) than the UK release, which contains a few films swapped from my version.

First up is "Hoist" - directed by Matthew Barney of the "Cremaster" series. You got a three-and-a-half minute close-up of a twitching, unclipped cock gradually getting hard. Cut to a work crew uprooting a tree. Then, the guy whose dick we saw earlier (listed in the credits as Blooming Greenman...) is inside some machinery with a radish up his ass, rubbing his dick on jizz-covered mechanisms until he's erect.

Next one is called "House Call". This one just looks like someone stuck a camera in front of a TV playing a '70s porno and set it to eerie music...

This is followed by "Cooking" which, like the previous film, was the work of a one-time film-maker. A chick blows a guy with a crystal dick until it turns into some kind of gelatinous mush. She then pisses into a bunch of glass vases. Afterwards, he fucks her with a new crystal dick, which she ends up pulling off and smashing. She then feeds him his crystal dick shards and her piss. Then he shits onto a plate and she eats it. It ends with her graphically shitting out a new crystal dick and it's happily ever after...

Up next is "Green Pink Caviar". A woman licks various colors and consistencies of liquid and slime off of glass as the camera is positioned under it. And this goes on for 8-minutes.

Followed up by "Scratch This" - another vintage porn exerpt that someone tampered with and tried to pass off as an 'art film'. This one shows an all girl three-way, only each frame of their faces and holes has been scratched out...

On to Larry Clark's segment, titled "Impaled". Clark holds a casting call for male porn actors. He interviews a bunch of innocuous dullards who talk about their sex lives before settling on some scrawny skater wuss who wants to pop his anal cherry with a chick. Out of the vacuous porn girls he gets to choose from, he picks an insatiably horny 40-year old and they shoot their scene.

Next is a very short animated film by Cecily Brown which features painted images of sex and 'money shots'.

Lastly, is Gaspar Noé's "We Fuck Alone" - easily the best and most harrowing of the set. The film alternates focus between a young man and woman in their separate bedrooms getting off to the same porno. She's using a teddy bear, while he uses a blow-up doll. He seems to be having a much harder time gaining any satisfaction from his masturbatory aid as he finds different positions for the doll and eventually starts 'degrading' it with a gun. A jarring strobe effect is used throughout the whole thing...

All of these films sucked except for the last two - with Noé's being the stand-out piece. But even THAT went on a bit too long, I thought. Clark's addition (the only one with any dialog...) was a disappointment and incredibly dull. The others were just pompous attempts at unarousing 'artistic/shock' material or just lazy reworkings of retro-porn. I feel like "Destricted" was a missed opportunity that could've benefited from the involvement of better film-makers.

ABCs of Death 2 (2014)

I enjoyed the first "ABCs of Death" anthology quite a bit. Definitely ranks among the best of it's kind I've seen and seemed to cater amply toward more "extreme" horror buffs with certain segments, I thought. Since seeing that, I was pretty stoked for the sequel and I must say - and some will argue - it tops it's predecessor.

Same set-up as the first film - 26 film-makers from around the world are asked to pick a letter of the alphabet and a word beginning with said letter and make a short film based on that word. Each installment is roughly 4-6 minutes in length and contains a prominent DEATH theme...

Some of the more notable shorts were "C is for Capital Punishment" - a guy is wrongfully executed - via sloppy axe beheading - for a crime he didn't commit. "D is for Deloused" - a stop-motion animated bit by Robert Morgan (known for "The Cat with Hands") about a dead guy who is resurrected by bugs to exact revenge on his killers. There's also another cool animated segment from Bill Plympton, which is a more chaotic and morbid take-off on his 1988 short, "How to Kiss". "J is for Jesus" was a decent one about some kind of 'angel' that is sent to protect a homosexual from a mob of God-fearing killer fag-haters and "S is for Split" was a pretty well-shot home invasion bit. One of the best, I thought, was "V is for Vacation" - a POV joint about a killer prostitute. "X" was cool, as it featured Béatrice Dalle, of "Inside" fame and THE best, hands down, was "Z" which was a brilliant fucking idea.

There's a few other good ones and some flat-out shitty ones - like, "F is for Falling" and Larry Fessenden's "N" segment - both were self-indulgent with very weak payoffs. Overall, I like these "ABCs" flicks and I hope they do more. They're basically just entertaining "samplings" of a wide range of film-makers and 'styles' with a hefty amount of gore, usually, so I can't see being too picky about it as a whole. Each segment is short so the discouraging looking 2-hour runtime actually goes by pretty fast, so I give "ABCs 2" a hearty rec. I know it's not everyone's "thing", but for the good bits it contains it's well worth a watch.

Freakshow (1989, Constantino Magnatta)

"Freakshow" is a somewhat obscure anthology flick that tries to go for some horror-comedy elements, but fails on every conceivable level. It's probably one of the worst of it's kind I've seen.

It's starts off with a down-and-out former usher gunning down movie-goers outside of the cinema he was recently fired from. His mass-murder is followed by his suicide and the soulless, on-scene media coverage. The hot female reporter's cameraman apparently has a strong moral stance against exploiting tragedy for news ratings and tells her to get a cab home (cuz apparently news camera guys call the shots). As she's trying to get a ride home, she comes across the owner of some kind of freakshow exhibit, where the highlight attraction is a jarred mutant with mind control capabilities. This causes her to visualize four pointless stories - the first one about a junkie who kills his dealer for a bag of dope, only to have a poodle run off with it, leading to a big, goofy chase. Second is about a dorky pizza delivery guy who is sent to a 'spooky' address full of hot, demonic nymphos. Third is the old gag involving a paralyzed-but-conscious person presumed dead on an autopsy slab. Fourth and final is about two gravediggers who are hired by a slutty widow to steal cemetery dirt for her ex-husband's swanky golf course. This obviously enrages the dead...

None of the segments are even the least bit clever or amusing. If I had to pick, I'd say the dirt dealers story was the best, but that's like picking a favorite hemorrhoid. It's all just so pointless and corny that I honestly can't even understand why/how this movie was ever made. And it's easily got the most idiotic wrap-around story ever used in an anthology flick. Terrible piece of shit movie.

Chillerama (2011)

I knew absolutely nothing about "Chillerama" prior to watching it and what I got is one of the most irritating, overly long Troma knock-offs in existence. It was conceived by four mostly non-horror film-makers (I'm sorry, but if your only horror credit is directing "Wrong Turn 2" then I can't consider you an 'official' horror film-maker) who each made an intentionally 'campy' segment for this "throwback" anthology...

The first part, called "Wadzilla" and directed by Adam Rifkin (of "MouseHunt and "Detroit Rock City" fame...), is about a guy who takes some experimental medication to increase his sperm count, only it just takes the one cell he has and causes it to grow into a giant, man-eating monster...

Next one - "I Was a Teenage Werebear", from Tim Sullivan ("2001 Maniacs" 1 and 2) - involves a 50s-style teenager falling in with a gang of gay "werebears". It's pretty much a gay musical parody of "Grease".

The last official "film" has Hitler using the diary of Anne Frankenstein to create a monster Jew. This one was directed by Adam Green of the "Hatchet" series...

The movie itself closes out by concluding the wrap-around story which is centered around a bunch of people watching these 'old films' at a drive-in theater's last night in business. One of the employees - who was zombified after fucking a corpse in the opening scene - causes a big zombie outbreak throughout the theater. Only the zombies eat AND rape everything in sight...

Coming in at 2-hours, this flick's novelty wears off fucking fast! In fact, it took me two sittings to get through, seeing as how my threshold for forced absurdity, dick jokes and all-around stupidity had reached it's ultimate limit after just that first 'giant sperm' segment. Having everything done deliberately shitty (over-acting, terrible green-screen FX, etc.) gets old pretty fast at this magnitude, considering that these four guys clearly didn't know when to end each of their overly long, tedious, one-joke premise short 'films'. It just gets painfully boring and just flat-out annoying really early on. I guess I've just seen enough shit like this with many of Troma's releases and such. As far as I'm concerned, this shouldn't have even been released. It's the perfect example of some buddies having a lot of fun goofing around, while the finished product should have just been left as an inside joke...

The ABCs of Death (2012)

Been meaning to check this one out for a while now, but it was never really top priority on my 'to watch list'. Wrong move on my part. "ABC's of Death" is one of the most enjoyable horror anthologies in years.

The gist here is that 26 film-makers from all over the world were given a letter of the alphabet and were to come up with a short narrative based on said letter. This makes for some exemplary 'short and sweet' segments jammed into an estimated 2-hour runtime.

Not every segment is a total winner, but there's certainly some interesting gems. A few of my favorites were "D is for Dogfight" (directed by Marcel Sarmiento, who co-wrote/directed the necro-zombie flick, "Deadgirl"), which was quite stylish in it's depiction of a man fist fighting a vicious dog in some kind of seedy underground fight ring setting. "O is for Orgasm" was one of the strangest of this assemblage - coming across as more of an 'arthouse' short than any of the others. "K is for Klutz" was a entertaining animated bit about a woman at a party who takes a shit and can't seem to get it to flush. It plays out kinda like a nasty Loony Toons short with a fucked up ending. My favorite entry was "L is for Libido" which plays out like a perverse game show type of thing in which two men are strapped to chairs and must jerk off to a variety of depraved shit put on display for them. If they fail to cum before their opponent, a spike mechanism impales them from ass to mouth. Masturbatory material includes stuff like an amputee getting off with her prosthetic leg and a man fucking a little boy. It's clever, well shot and definitely the most whacked out portion of "ABC's". Simon Rumley's "P is for Pressure" comes in at a close second, I'd say.

There were other segments I enjoyed. A few fell a little short. The one with the Nazi fox stripper was a little too ridiculous and the POV surfer bit - as well as Ti West's contribution, "M is for Miscarriage", were pretty dull and phoned in. Still, "ABC's of Death" is a cool concept for an anthology horror flick and never gets too long-winded or repetitive. It's really the perfect variety of themes consisting of tongue-n-cheek humor, over-the-top gore and some more straight-forward horror elements. Nothing about it really goes the conventional "spooky" route, however, as the title suggests, they all contain a prominent DEATH theme. So if you happen to share in my apathy for ghostly horror flicks, you'll dig "ABC's".

V/H/S (2012)

I think the "found footage" sub-genre can pretty much close out on this note. Now that those weak-ass "Paranormal Activity" flicks are finally tapering off, I'm thinkin' we can look back fondly at "V/H/S" as a worthy conclusion to a popular modern horror 'trend'. At least, that's the way I'd prefer it...

The wrap-around for this 'mockumentary'-style anthology deals with a group of miscreants with a camcorder who are trying to make money by recording bullshit home-movies of them pulling unsuspecting women's shirts up and smashing up abandoned buildings. General raucous behavior, pretty much. They're given a job from an unknown party to break into an old man's house and steal a certain video tape. The old man is slumped in a chair, seemingly dead and surrounded by TV monitors and tapes, so the thieves start rummaging through the stacks and begin playing some of the videos...

The first video (directed by David Bruckner) follows a group of douche-bag young guys who go bar-hopping with one of them wearing spy-cam glasses. They end up bringing a few chicks back to their motel room with hopes of scoring some amateur on-camera fuckin'. Shit goes bad when one of the girls passes out and the other turns into a blood-guzzling succubus... This one was pretty fucking cool!

Next is "Second Honeymoon" (directed by Ti West) about a young couple on a Grand Canyon vacation that turns creepy when a girl breaks into their motel room while they're sleeping and fucks with them. This one had the big "twist" at the end that I didn't find all that satisfying after the heavily drawn-out build up...

Segment three (directed by Glenn McQuaid) has a group of boisterous youths hiking through the woods and smoking pot until they are suddenly murdered by a brutal killer that refuses to show up on camera. This one wasn't the worst. Had a few decent kills.

"The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger" (directed by Joe Swanberg) is the next one and goes the web-cam route. A girl with a terribly unattractive haircut is web-chatting with her med student boyfriend about some strange shit that's going on in her house at night. Through their pixilated interactions, she shows him glimpses of little things that appear to be babies running around in the dark. I'd have to call this the worst portion of the movie. Piss-poor acting and a confusingly vague ending...

The final story (directed by the Radio Silence Production team) is the big 'special effects' laden installment, although the premise is very basic. A group of friends show up at a mansion for a Halloween costume party (one of them equipped with a nanny-cam in in mask of his bear suit). The house appears to be empty until they wander up a hidden staircase leading to the attic where a group of guys have a girl chained up. They appear to be preparing some kind of sacrifice, but it quickly becomes apparent that there are supernatural forces in their midst as they attempt to rescue the girl and flee the evil inhabited house...

"V/H/S" is a pretty decent anthology. The best segments are certainly the first and very last. There's a good amount of bloody demises, nudity and some cleverly morbid visuals. Again, I didn't like the web-cam piece and I expected a little more from Ti West's contribution, although it wasn't horrible. A couple of things I noticed though, in terms of reoccurring themes, were young, college-age kids "bro-ing down". Seriously, the majority of the stories were douche-bag guys looking for pussy or smoking pot. Got a little tiring... Also, I thought the wrap-around material could've been handled a little better. I liked what they were going for, but I felt that it didn't really finish off all that strong. Still, "V/H/S" is actually a surprisingly cool flick, overall, that I would definitely recommend - especially to those like-minded individuals who figured the "found footage" thing had been beaten into the ground with all the repetitive teenybopper "Paranormal Activity"/"Last Exorcism" horse shit that's been vomited up over the past few years....

The Burning Moon (1997, Olaf Ittenbach)

Olaf Ittenbach's "The Burning Moon" is pretty top-notch 'German-gore' in my humble opinion. The premise is utter dog shit, but the amount, and - above all - QUALITY of gore in this one sold me pretty quick...

A teenage junkie punk spikes his vein after his parents leave for the night and goes to his sister's room to tell her some bedtime stories. The first one is called "Julia's Love" and it's about a chick who goes on a blind date with a freshly escaped mental patient psychopath. She ends up finding out who he is and flees, only to have him track her down and slaughter her entire family. The other segment is called "The Purity". Set in the 50's - it starts off with a guy raping a young woman and blowing her brains out. The guy turns out to be the town priest who moonlights as a satanic serial killer. The locals believe that the one responsible for these random acts of savagery is a local farmer whom they beat up and eventually pay to have killed by a local hitman...

Both of these stories aren't all that clever or anything and the second one goes on a bit too long. It's really the nasty gore that's the stand-out allure of this type of shit, anyway. The effects are very good and are kept adequately consistent. Plus, the ending contains one seriously badass and gruesome depiction of Hell that is the total highlight of the film. Cranial mutilations, shotgun suicides, teeth drilling, intestine devouring. It's a fucking gorehound's paradise. Like-minded splatter fans need to seek this one out.

Scarlet Fry's Junkfood Horrorfest (2007, Brian Crow, Scarlet Fry)

Anthology horror films are typically a well favored commodity for those looking for allegorical variety within the span of a normal length film. The beauty of the "anthology" is that you can almost always pick out your favorite segment (or, at least, the one you found sucked the LEAST). As far as "Scarlet Fry's Junkfood Horrorfest" goes - I can only describe it as the official anti-anthology horror film with absolutely NO discernible creativity or thought put into each of the 8+ shorts it contains.

Scarlet Fry - a guy who piddles around in the mega-low-budget horror scene - plays a backwoods zombie in the hacky wrap-around story, unamusingly introducing each bastardly "story". The first story, "Bloodthirsty Butcher", is simply about a morbidly obese man who is out of food so he lures a girl from a laundromat to eat her. Other stories are basically the same, in terms of brainlessness. Another story shows a man committing suicide in manner suspiciously similar to the beginning of Buttgereit's "Der Todesking". There's one about a satanist who kills his girlfriend/wife after she catches him in another ritual. My favorite segment, by far, has a bunch of over-aged skater punks who are offered drug money by an effeminate male prostitute in a parking garage. To be honest, I laughed my balls off at this scene.

Overall, "Junkfood Horrorfest" is just what the title suggests. Junky, micro-budget film making that anyone with a halfway decent (and ultimately immature) sense of humor and a six-beer buzz will get a kick out of simply based on how half-assed and LAZY the piece of shit is!

Trilogy of Terror (1975, Dan Curtis)

If made-for-TV horror films were ever to pop onto network television these days (not hypothetical, but impossible!), they'd certainly have some big shoes to fill, especially when it comes to this nutty anthology from '75. I doubt that topics such as date rape, voodoo-based suicide, and killer aborigine toys could ever be packed, competently, into a 70 minute film again, let alone one made for the American Broadcasting Channel...

The first segment in the film (no wrap-around story, by the way) is called "Julie" and it's about a meek looking college professor who reluctantly accompanies a seemingly respectable male student out on a date. He promptly tosses some Rohypnol (or some other kind of sedative I buy in bulk) in her drink before driving her to a motel and taking "explicit" photos of her for the purpose of sexual blackmail.

Story #2 is a worthless bore called "Millicent and Therese". One mild mannered sister wants to put an end to her floosie sister's obnoxious and "evil" ways... The "twist" ending is embarrassingly predictable.

The third and final portion of the movie, titled "Amelia", is the big payoff with the culturally iconic mascot's initial appearance. The Zuni fetish doll's magical chain falls off, causing the spirit within the object to gain control over the vicious looking little figure and attack Karen Black. This is seriously a non-stop uproar of savage doll noises and a woman's struggle for survival against the flailing, steak knife wielding puppet. That's the extent of this story's plot, but that's all it takes for you to derive entertainment from it...

"Trilogy of Terror" is nothing great as far as anthology flicks go. It pales in comparison to shit like "Creepshow" and, my personal favorite, "Tales From the Darkside: The Movie". Still, if you dig Karen Black like I do, you'll certainly find her presence in each fable (plus, a dual role in 2nd story) to be a nice gag. Richard Matheson is credited with writing the screenplay, as well.

Overall, "Trilogy of Terror" is one of those favorable glimpses at the gloriously nostalgic 70s when television studios actually beamed horror entertainment into your home...

Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983, Joe Dante, John Landis)

I used to watch "The Twilight Zone" show as a kid. In re-runs of course and due to my lack of existence in the decade in which it began, I was unable experience the series freshly. That didn't hold me back from enjoying the classic episodes (as well as the redundant ones) throughout my childhood years and up until I discovered the movie...

"Twilight Zone: The Movie" is an arrangement of four stories seen in the original series, remade by four different directors. The first segment (as well as the lazily hacky prologue) was directed by John Landis and is about a transparently hard-core racist who steps out of a bar and into multiple sections of history involving war and hatred. The second (Spielberg directed) revolves around a retirement home in which elders find their 'inner child'. Third, from Joe Dante: a child with unlimited wishes terrorizes his family. Fourth and final, by George Miller, is the classic "Terror at 20,000 Feet" story...

I advise anyone interested in this movie to immediately skip to the fourth segment, since it is really the only portion of the film with any kind of tension or horror/sci-fi ambition. John Lithgow nails it as the paranoid airline passenger and the cramped atmosphere, as well as the partially obstructed view of the maniacal creature purposely tearing away at the engine, is very well done. The Landis story is a "don't be a bigot" PSA that really doesn't leave any kind of impact once it finally ends. There is no direction in the story and the "moralistic" bullshit doesn't quite work. Spielberg's boring geezer segment is pretty much a whimsical children's fable without a trace of payoff. Dante's is alright. His includes some neat effects and over-the-top acting which I enjoyed. Still, it comes and goes with little satisfaction.

As far as "Twilight Zone: The Movie" goes, all you really need is the airplane segment and go and check out Vic Morrow's infamous helicopter death online and leave it at that...