Review: Trilogy of Terror II (1996)

Trilogy of Terror II is a 1996 made-for-TV anthology movie whose gimmick is that each of the segments stars the same actress.  The original from 1975 (also a made-for-TV affair) famously had Karen Black as its star.  More famously, it had the Zuni doll which kept the movie alive in the minds of many and whose notoriety most likely lead to this sequel (both share the same director: John Curtis).

It's tempting to skip to the last sequence of the film (the above poster makes it clear that everyone involved knew what we were here for) that stars the doll, but I'll stick to the actual order.

Our first segment, where we meet this trilogy's three-part star Lysette Anthony, is called The Graveyard Rats.  Anthony stars as Laura, the wife to millionaire Ansford (Matt Clark) who has caught her having an affair with Ben (Geraint Wyn Davies).  He threatens her with a tape incriminating her in the affair if she doesn't end it.  Rather than do so, Ben convinces her to instead kill Ansford instead.

You may be wondering where the graveyard rats of the title come into this segment, but don't worry, this segment is in no rush to get to that point.  The lovers attempt their plan, and I won't say what the end result is, but it does - after a long interim where we watch the surviving cast members go to a bar (where we hear a story about the rats) then bury and dig up the character that dies.  Only at this point - shortly before the segment ends - do we get the titular rats.  You'd think they'd either go with a different name for the segment or get to the rats faster, but not so much.

It's the weakest of the three by far: draggy and far too much time spent on buildup followed by a weirdly written sequence of escalations and betrayals.  The rats themselves don't look that great - which may explain the delay in their appearance - and while no one is bad in it, no one is particularly interesting either.

Our second segment is called Bobby.  In this segment, Anthony plays Alma, a woman grief-stricken by the death of her son Bobby, who drowned sometime in the past.  Unable to cope, she results to a dark ritual where she calls on a deity to return her son to her.  She then hears a knock on the door to find Bobby (Blake Heron) there, claiming to not have drowned but instead having washed ashore some distance away where he was cared for by a family.  Despite her suspicions of the story, Alma gladly welcomes him back.

This, to me, has the best performance from Anthony.  She plays the grief and depression very well in the beginning.  When Bobby first starts to act different, she does a great job of playing a woman who knows something is wrong but refusing to accept it and ignoring it instead.  Once Bobby fully reveals himself as Not Having Coming Back Right, she plays the terror (and maybe guilt?) in those scenes incredibly well.  There's an implication that maybe Bobby's drowning is not accidental, but given that we hear that from whatever is pretending to be Bobby, I'm not sure how reliable that is - it could just be the entity playing into any guilt Alma might have felt after it.  Either way, this is probably the best segment of the three.

Our final segment - featuring the Zuni doll everyone came for - is called He Who Kills.  It is a direct continuation of the original segment from 1975, where after the death of the those characters, the doll is sent to a museum so that Dr. Simpson (Anthony again) can determine what, if anything, it had to do with the double murder.  As she soon finds out: everything.

For the Zuni doll soon comes to life and starts murdering.  This segment gets to the violence quickly and the bulk of it is Dr. Simpson desperately trying to find a way to keep the doll at bay.  It's probably the best pure-terror performance from Lysette Anthony out of the three segments, with her giving a fairly convincing performance that a doll could be as threatening as the segment wants you to believe.

There isn't much plot to this one; it knows what the audience wants it delivers it.  I wish that the other victims would have received a bit more time before being offed, but given the time constraints, what we get is fairly solid.

It's a definite recommend for campy fun.

6.5 out of 10