Main cast: Lysette Anthony (Laura Ansford, Alma, Dr Simpson), Geraint Wyn Davies (Ben), Matt Clark (Ansford), Geoffrey Lewis (Stubbs), Blake Heron (Bobby), Richard Fitzpatrick (Jerry O’Farrell), and Thomas Mitchell (Lew)
Director: Dan Curtis
Well, well, well. After 21 long years of absolutely no one clamoring for a sequel, Dan Curtis finally graced us with Trilogy of Terror II in 1996. Was he sitting around for two decades thinking, “You know what the world needs? More tiny wooden sociopaths”? Or did his accountant just call with some unfortunate news? Either way, we’re not judging – we’ve all had moments where we need to scourge up money urgently to pay some bills.
This time, gone is Karen Black’s manic energy, replaced by Lysette Anthony’s posh British refinement. Ms Anthony glides through each segment with the kind of elegant composure that makes you wonder if she’s secretly thinking about teatime while being terrorized. Her accent is so gloriously upper crust that she could make reading a grocery list sound like Shakespeare. While she lacks Ms Black’s unhinged intensity, she brings her own brand of sophisticated scream queen excellence — think less “tortured artist” and more “duchess having a very bad day.”
Our first tale, The Graveyard Rats, is essentially what happens when someone watches Tales from the Crypt and thinks, “This needs more puns and less subtlety.” Laura Ashford, played by Ms Anthony with delicious calculation, is your classic trophy wife married to a fossil who probably remembers when television was invented. When hubby discovers her affair with his cousin Ben, he threatens to cut her off faster than a bad internet connection.
Ben’s brilliant solution? Murder, obviously! Laura acts appropriately shocked, which is Hollywood code for “absolutely thrilled that someone else is doing the heavy lifting.”.
After dispatching dear old Ashford, they decide to bury him in a cemetery that’s basically the rodent equivalent of a five-star hotel. Plot twist: the sneaky corpse took the Swiss bank account codes to his grave like some kind of financial ghost.
Matt Clark camps it up as the villainous husband with such delicious over-the-top wickedness that you half expect him to twirl a mustache while tying someone to railroad tracks. Everyone involved seems to understand they’re making premium cheese, and they’re committed to making it the finest cheese possible. The gruesome ending is appropriately satisfying, though anyone with a rat phobia should probably skip this one and go watch something less traumatic, like Jaws.
And then we have Bobby, which answers the age-old question: “What if we took a perfectly serviceable ghost story and beat it to death with repetitive dialogue?”
Alma decides to resurrect her dead son Bobby because apparently grief counseling was booked solid. Spoiler alert: dead children who hate their mothers don’t make for ideal houseguests. What follows is essentially a woman and her undead offspring playing the world’s most depressing game of hide-and-seek.
The atmospheric setup is genuinely effective – all dark and stormy night vibes that would make Edgar Allan Poe proud. Unfortunately, the story has about as much substance as cotton candy in a rainstorm.
The real drinking game isn’t trying to survive the horror — it’s taking a sip every time someone screams “Mommy!” or “Bobby!” Fair warning: you’ll be unconscious before the segment ends, which might actually improve the viewing experience.
Finally, our diminutive wooden overlord returns in He Who Kills! The Zuni doll is back, presumably because someone in the writer’s room said, “You know what this sequel needs? The exact same thing that worked the first time, but with less imagination.”
We get a perfunctory explanation about Karen Black’s character’s fate (spoiler: it didn’t go well), and now the doll has found a new victim in Dr Simpson, a forensic scientist who apparently never learned the golden rule of horror movies: when you find a creepy doll, you don’t study it — you throw it in a furnace and never speak of it again.
What follows is essentially a greatest hits compilation of the original doll segment, complete with the same structure, the same “surprising” twist, and the same fundamental question: why doesn’t anyone just get a really big jar? The predictability is so thick you could cut it with a knife, which is ironic since the doll seems to prefer tiny spears.
Don’t get me wrong. The little guy is still genuinely unsettling, chittering around like a murderous wind-up toy from your worst nightmares. He’s undeniably cute in that “I want to murder you but I’m pocket-sized” way. It’s just that watching the exact same cat-and-mouse routine play out again feels like watching a cover band perform the same song twice in a row.
Trilogy of Terror II proves that Lysette Anthony is a worthy successor to Karen Black’s throne, bringing her own sophisticated brand of horror heroism to the proceedings. She elevates every scene she’s in, which is fortunate since she’s in literally all of them. The woman could probably make reading insurance policies sound compelling.
However, this is very much a case of one fantastic segment (The Graveyard Rats) carrying two others that range from tediously repetitive to paint-by-numbers predictable. It’s like getting a three-course meal where the appetizer is absolutely divine, the main course puts you to sleep, and the dessert is just the appetizer again but slightly stale.
