The episode of The Black Sheep covering The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning was Written and Narrated by Andrew Hatfield, Edited by Brandon Nally, Produced by Lance Vlcek and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.
I’ve been on a bit of a TV kick lately. You’ll see it coming up in one of the adaptation videos but also in what I’ve been watching. The 2023 season of Creepshow has been a lot of fun and Mike Flanagan’s “Succession mixed with a Giallo” in Fall of the House of Usher has been one of my favorite pieces of media this year. It reminded me a lot of growing up watching the second coming of TV horror movies in the 90s. I hesitate to call it the golden age because I think the 70s still holds that title but the 90s had all manner from Stephen King adaptations, like, a ton of them in addition to many horror TV shows that would go down as all timers like Tales from the Crypt and The X-Files. Of course, you can’t mention TV horror and we probably wouldn’t have much of what we do, without talking about Dan Curtis. His 1975 horror anthology Trilogy of Terror is one of the most influential things to air on TV but don’t sleep on its sequel that came out 21 years later: Trilogy of Terror II (buy it HERE) a true Black Sheep of TV terror.
Dan Curtis is a legend for horror that mostly stayed in the realm of TV. While he did give us the Oliver Reed slow burn theatrical release of Burnt Offerings in 1976, he started by creating the vampire soap opera Dark Shadows that originally ran from 1966 to 1971. It would be revived, again by Curtis, in 1991 and a movie from Tim Burton would come out 6 years after Dan’s death in 2012. That idea and show would be enough for his legend, but he also gave us the two Night Stalker movies that led to, in my opinion, one of the greatest shows of all time with Darren McGavin. The Norliss Tapes, Dracula with Jack Palance, Curse of the Black Widow, and Scream of the Wolf are all classics. Then you have his two landmark anthologies. Dead of Night is an anthology horror that is an homage to the 1946 anthology from pre-Hammer and Amicus powerhouse Ealing. Two years before that though, Trilogy of Terror gave him the cache to do another anthology.
Trilogy of Terror was a phenomenon with killer ratings and reviews. While it may seem like a cash in, the sequel does enough to warrant a watch and mixes different actors, writers, stories, and styles to make it one of the best non-Stephen King TV adaptations of the decade. The first film had the dream pairing of Richard Matheson and Dan Curtis. All three stories were Matheson stories and Curtis knew who to cast and how to direct them. This is a little different as only one of the stories is written by Matheson, the second one which is a retread of one of his stories from Dead of Night. To be fair, the third story about a Zuni fetish doll that goes crazy is a sequel to the third story in the first film too so it’s basically Matheson. The first story is based on a short story by Henry Kutner. Kutner was a fairly prolific author of sci fi, fantasy, and horror whose stories were turned into multiple anthology segments of episodes of Twilight Zone and other similar shows.
The second segment is that repurposed Matheson tale and the third was a sequel to Amelia from the first movie called “He Who Kills” and it was written by Curtis and William F. Nolan. Nolan was a semi-frequent collaborator with Curtis and also worked in the TV sphere on his own. His biggest contribution may be as the writer of Logan’s Run, both the movie and the TV show. The movie jumps right into things too. There is no wraparound tale that is frequent with the anthology format but that’s consistent not only with the first movie but also the old EC comics. There was a host, sure, but not a wraparound story that tried to thread everything together. Honestly those end up being awkward or poorly implemented at times and part of the charm here is that it is presenting exactly what it says. A Trilogy of Terror.
The first story opens with some of the classic tropes of these kinds of stories. You have the elderly rich man and his young wife, the lover who comes up with a plan to get all the money, and the whole plan falling apart. The old millionaire, played by wonderful character actor Matt Clark, has video evidence of his wife’s infidelity but gives her just one more chance or he will leak the tape and cut her from the will. Clark is mostly known as a “that guy” from westerns but showed up in horror from time to time. The wife and her lover decide that they will just kill the old man before he catches them again and the money will be all theirs. They end up killing him in a really well shot and tense scene and just when they think they have won, we get the old no money available angle. Before he died, the old man had transferred all the money and had the codes put on a microfilm to be buried with him.
With no other options, they go to dig him up and we get another strong character actor performance from frequent Clint Eastwood counterpart Geoffrey Lewis who also happens to be the father of Juliette Lewis. Here he plays the cemetery caretaker and warns them of rats, giant rats in fact. Of course, they don’t believe him and kill him off. Laura then kills her lover Ben so she can keep all the money and tries to recover the body before, wouldn’t you know it, giant rats take the body underground. She goes after it with the expected results of zero microfilm and an additional dead body. The rat scene is fun with some gore and cool effects on how the rats are shown. This was a Showtime premiere, and they were allowed to have some of the above basic cable allowances. It’s a good table setter for the movie and could be an episode on the previously mentioned Creepshow or Tales from the Crypt.
The second story gives us Alma alone in her house with her husband away at work. She is sad and guilty after the drowning of her son but has a plan to make things better. If the actress looks familiar it’s because it’s the same one who played Laura in the first story. Get used to it as she will be the central protagonist in the final story too. The actress is Lysette Anthony and it’s a call back to the first film that had Karen Black in all three stories. It’s a wonderful decision and Anthony does an admirable job in the three stories as three very different characters. If Anthony is familiar, it’s because to a fan of a certain age, she was a huge crush. Not only was she the princess in Krull and later in Without a Clue, which is just flat out one of the best Sherlock Holmes stories there is. Alma decides to use magic to try and bring back her son and at first, she is successful. At first.
Over the course of the segment, she starts to notice that her little boy isn’t the same kid she had before the accident. She tries to feed him, and he starts acting strange and asking strange questions. She becomes uncomfortable but still wants her son back. At some point he just goes full terror and impersonates her husband, accuses her of never wanting him, and actively hunts her. I’m torn because as a parent, these types of kids in horror stories work for me. It’s not Anthony’s fault either as her fear and sadness is palpable. The kid actor is, well, he’s on the bad end of being a kid actor unfortunately. The story is compelling and if we had a kid like the little guy from the original Pet Sematary or a more subtle evil kid performance like Macaulay Culkin in The Good Son, it would have worked out much better. At the end he turns into a demon, and we find out you shouldn’t use magic to bring people back from the dead.
The third story is the showcase like it is in the first movie and just like in the first movie it involves a Zuni fetish doll. In fact, as I said before, it’s a sequel to that story that takes place in the apartment where Karen Blacks character is now dead. The Doll is dropped off to a museum doctor for study and she finds weird things about it. It’s supposed to reanimate after a gold chain is removed and it’s also growing back its protective skin. The thing of course comes alive and takes out a security guard before setting its sights on the doctor. In a cool nod to the creator of the movie, a security guard is also seen reading a Dark Shadows comic book and comments about having watched the show as a kid.
The doll and doctor have a fairly intense fight with the doll stabbing, biting, and punching the doctor. She gets it stuck in a case while trying to grab her car keys to escape and even though it breaks out, she is also able to drop it in some acid. The movie follows it’s own rules of telling us that the doll in nearly indestructible and can possess other people and sure enough, our doctor is taken over and kills her date that finally shows up at the end with an axe. There are no happy endings in this trilogy and nearly everyone pays the price.
The movie won a primetime Emmy for outstanding makeup and did well for itself with fans, being seen by a lot of people. While many critics found it unnecessary and a basic retread of the first film, us horror fans ate it up. It was released on a rather bare bones DVD by universal in 2008 before getting a wonderful Blu-ray transfer complete with special features by Kino Lorber over a decade later in 2019. While it isn’t as good or influential as the 1970s original, it holds that special place in 90s filmmaking where TV horror and direct to video horror stood tall in a decade full of movies and a whole damn genre that was suffering an identity crisis. Pick up this one as a good relic of TV horror and a fun, no pulled punches anthology where everyone gets what’s coming to them.
A couple of the previous episodes of The Black Sheep can be seen below. To see more, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
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