Trilogy of Terror. Dan Curtis, 1975.
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Edition screened: Kino/Lorber Blu-ray, released 2018. English language. Runtime approximately 72 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Karen Black stars in all three segments of this famous made-for-TV anthology of short films, “Julie”, “Millicent and Therese”, and “Ameilia”.
This release includes a 17-minute interview with Karen Black from 2006 called “Three Colors Black” that was a real eye-opener. Throughout most of the interview Black relates her believable rise from Broadway chorus girl to TV actress to Hollywood star. But she closes with a smack to the head in which she explains the difference between horror and science fiction, a description so memorable in its unbelievability that I can recall it quite accurately.
Very close to quoted, Black explains: Horror is about cutting up bodies. It’s about blood, and bodies not staying together. Science Fiction is about concepts like going to the moon. I have only ever done Science Fiction films, never horror. I’ve only made concept films based in science.
She concludes by crediting Trilogy director Michael Curtis for teaching this to her. Mind you, we have just watched three short films that are psychological horror in any literate person’s assessment, the first two being adaptations of common Poe-style Gothic tales and the last a fairly bloody Chucky-style story about an unstoppable killer doll. They are unified by a solid absence of anything like Science Fiction. Black also unknowingly discloses that she does not understand that this made-for-TV horror trilogy is a substantial downgrade from the important, quality films that launched her career such as Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces.
I suspect that during the Slasher Film era of the 80s and 90s, Karen Black became embarrassed and confused by her status as a Horror Queen and wished to differentiate that she never made those kind of movies. Agreed, confirmed, whatever. More significantly to cineasts, perhaps a parallel to the career of Klaus Kinsky has been revealed. That exquisite German method actor fell from hyper-A list status to picking up dopey roles in spaghetti westerns and cheap horror films because he was impossible to work with. He deserved his reputation for sinking productions with his childish behavior and for bringing costly struggles to the set that outweighed his talent. Similarly, perhaps it became unacceptably exasperating for directors like Coppola and Schlesinger to continue working with an actresses who unfortunately seems to be as stupid as she looks despite the intermittent sexual attractiveness of that stupid appearance.