ColonelColinCaine
07-14-2000, 10:20 PM
I'm talking about the one from 1975, not the crappy sequel. Have any of you seen it? I only saw it once when I was about two, so I really can't remember anything, except what my parents told me, but I'll get back to that later.
It was a trio of stories, all starring Karen Black (Five Easy Pieces, Invaders from Mars), the most memorable of which is "Amelia" based on Richard Matheson's short story "Prey". It' about a woman who buys a very ugly Zuni Fetish doll wearing a chain as a present for her boyfriend. Apparently the chain keeps the dolls spirit from escaping. Well, as Karen gets up to take a shower, the chain falls off somehow and... well I think you can guess what happens.
While Karen's in the shower, the doll seal off all of the exits from her apartment, and when she gets out, the little bastard chases her all around the apartment with a butcher knife, screaming his little head off the whole time. Miss Black wraps it up in a towel and tries drowning it in the bathtub, but that doesn't even work. It all leads up to a shocking climax with a final image that looks (from some of the pictures I've seen) like something straight out of a nightmare.
Now, back to when I was two years old. My parents saw this in the t.v. guide, and so they put me to bed early. Well, I stayed up the whole time playing with my toys, breaking them, breaking other things with them, you know, regular kid stuff. Well, for some reason I decided to venture into the living room right in the middle of the Zuni doll sequence.
I screamed. I cried. I screamed some more.
And then I screamed a little more. Oh, yeah, and I ran out into the parking lot of our apartments, screaming the whole time, at about twelve at night. Then I ran back inside and hid under my bed.
My parents used to tell me this story all the time, and I was so excited when the sequel came out. I was a little disappointed with the Zuni doll segment (oh, it scared the hell out of me) but it just seemed like a retread of what my parent's had told me about the original.
Still, a classic story, directed by Dan Curtis of Dark Shadows fame.
It was a trio of stories, all starring Karen Black (Five Easy Pieces, Invaders from Mars), the most memorable of which is "Amelia" based on Richard Matheson's short story "Prey". It' about a woman who buys a very ugly Zuni Fetish doll wearing a chain as a present for her boyfriend. Apparently the chain keeps the dolls spirit from escaping. Well, as Karen gets up to take a shower, the chain falls off somehow and... well I think you can guess what happens.
While Karen's in the shower, the doll seal off all of the exits from her apartment, and when she gets out, the little bastard chases her all around the apartment with a butcher knife, screaming his little head off the whole time. Miss Black wraps it up in a towel and tries drowning it in the bathtub, but that doesn't even work. It all leads up to a shocking climax with a final image that looks (from some of the pictures I've seen) like something straight out of a nightmare.
Now, back to when I was two years old. My parents saw this in the t.v. guide, and so they put me to bed early. Well, I stayed up the whole time playing with my toys, breaking them, breaking other things with them, you know, regular kid stuff. Well, for some reason I decided to venture into the living room right in the middle of the Zuni doll sequence.
I screamed. I cried. I screamed some more.
And then I screamed a little more. Oh, yeah, and I ran out into the parking lot of our apartments, screaming the whole time, at about twelve at night. Then I ran back inside and hid under my bed.
My parents used to tell me this story all the time, and I was so excited when the sequel came out. I was a little disappointed with the Zuni doll segment (oh, it scared the hell out of me) but it just seemed like a retread of what my parent's had told me about the original.
Still, a classic story, directed by Dan Curtis of Dark Shadows fame.