Everyone has their staples for Halloween watching, like John Carpenter’s “Halloween” and “Nightmare Before Christmas. But be forewarned, gentle reader, because your master of Scarimonies (God, I sound like the Crypt Keeper), Dukey Flyswatter, will suggest some gems and themes that may have flown drastically under your radar, like a schizophrenic Vampire Bat.
Week One: Horror Anthology Films. Often referred to in Europe and England as Portmanteau films, they contain a selection of stories during the course of a normal feature running time.
Sunday Oct.2: Trilogy Of Terror ll
1996. Dir. Dan Curtis. Stars: Lysette Anthony, Geoffrey Lewis.
20 years after the first “Trilogy of Terror” shocker with Karen Black (which made many kids wet their jammies in front of the TV), Curtis (“Dark Shadows”) returns to the same formula with a solid sequel almost worthy of the original. These vignettes are all pretty much one-liner set ups with a twist at the end to make us go, “Whoa, dude!” Lysette Anthony does quite well in each of the episodes, but she’s not Karen Black. The weird “Tales du Jour” include a mother summoning her dead son — much to her regret, giant flesh-eating rats in the graveyard, and the return of the killer Zuni Fetish Doll, starting where the first rendition of the story ended. That Zuni doll who kills does a number on a great deal of people I know. Available on Amazon.com.
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