It's Only a Movie, It's Only a Movie...

"Trilogy of Terror" is a movie that has permanently scarred me for life. I don't know why it was broadcast on a UHF station on a Sunday afternoon at my grandmother's house. This was, and still is, a very scary movie, and not just from the point of view of a six year old. My mother was screaming too. Why she didn't turn it off, or banish my sister and I from viewing it, remains one of the gravest heresies of her parental skills. I feel the next several months of my sister and I shrieking from night terrors over “The Voodoo Doll", was a just punishment for her, now that I look back. I'm thirty-five years old now, and this movie still unnerves me, even though I have only seen it the one time. I don't think I could sit through it, at any age, without it inducing the same level of panic and hysteria I originally experienced. The following is testimony of how a 30-minute slice of film can follow you around the rest of your life.
First, allow me to introduce a bit of cinematic history on this film. According to my recollection, and what I could concur on www.imdb.com, "Trilogy of Terror" was a made for TV movie, filmed in 1975, starring scream queen movie star, Karen Black. The movie consists of three unrelated short horror stories directed by Dan Curtis, who was best known for his work on a vampire horror series, "Dark Shadows". Ms. Black plays four different roles of tormented women in the film, with the most chilling in the story of "Amelia". Amelia arrives home from shopping to find a package containing a Zuni hunting fetish doll. This doll has razor sharp teeth and a hunting spear, and the package also contains a scroll claiming the doll contains the spirit of a hunter, in which a gold chain on the doll traps the hunter's spirit within the fetish. Amelia then calls her mother to cancel their plans as she has a date, and we see a slightly unstable side of her, and how she suffers from her mother's overbearing behavior. As Amelia leaves the room, we see the gold chain fall off the doll. Amelia starts to prepare dinner with a carving knife. Later, she enters the room to see the doll is not on the table. As she returns to the kitchen, her carving knife is missing. The formula for your standard horror experience is then properly utilized. At this point, I will not ruin the film for you, for fear of causing you years of trauma, and honestly, I just don't want to relive the gory details. Needless to say, the doll chases her through her apartment, she is bitten, she destroys the doll in her oven, calls her mother to apologize, and invites her over to her apartment. The story ends with a feral looking Amelia, now with the same scary teeth of the doll, holding her carving knife, and waiting for her mother to arrive.
Aside from the several months of night terrors, my first conscious encounter of the impact this movie had on me, happened when I was nine years old. My sister and I were staying with friends of the family who had a house cat. We thought it would be fun to camp out inside their apartment, since it was a rainy day. So, the idea was to set up a tent for the kids, and we were to have hot dogs and s'mores for dinner that evening. However, while we were constructing the tent in the bedroom, their black cat, Tibby, crawled underneath the tent, and savagely pounced and clawed at my ankles; somewhat similar to "the bathroom scene" from "Amelia". To say I handled the situation rationally would be an understatement. We were not accustomed to inside pets, especially ones that would mindlessly attack for no warranted reason. Beyond any doubt, this episode of broken psychosis did not bode well for the remainder of the evening, as I just sat on the couch crying and sulking and watching MTV. That night, I had a nightmare. A long suppressed visit from our dear friend, the Voodoo-Zuni doll. This bothered our family friend so much, that she called my mother to pick me up the next morning.
My husband and I endured several grueling months of the name selection process, while I was pregnant. I recall him teasing me with naming the baby Amelia, even though we knew we were having a boy. I should have never confided in Jason about that movie being so terrifying to me. This teasing eventually led to yet more Voodoo-Zuni doll-based nightmares about the baby being born with the same razor sharp teeth, as well as a dream about baking the baby in the oven. When Max, and not Amelia, was finally born, I was relieved to see he was toothless, and am proud of the fact that I have always lacked the desire to bake him in a kiln.
As Max progressed with his development; I recall the moment when I witnessed his first steps. I was dozing on our couch, when a two and a half foot tall blurry something went rocketing across the living room. This momentarily conjured up the same fear I had experienced when I was six and nine. My first completely rational, split second of a thought was that the apartment was haunted by Tattoo from Fantasy Island, or we had a leprechaun, or that Voodoo-Zuni doll had come for me! Then, my delayed maternal instinct finally kicked in, and l realized Max had just run across the room... RUN ACROSS THE ROOM?!?! He went from crawling to running, with no walking in between. Again, I was not accustomed to him being independently mobile; especially in my half asleep state of mind, and it was truly a magical moment for all of us, including the Voodoo-Zuni doll, leprechaun, and Herve Villechaize.
Scary movies do indeed have a lasting effect on children; certainly in my own personal experience. In a research study, “Tales from the Screen: Enduring Fright Reactions to Scary Media, “ researcher Kristen Harrison and her colleague, Joanne Cantor found the younger the study's participants were when they viewed a scary movie and TV program, the longer-lasting the effects. This study led me to question why we even like scary movies, considering the anxieties they leave behind. I found the best reply for this question in the first statement of “Why We Crave Horror Movies”, an essay by Stephen King. “I think that we’re all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better – and maybe not all that much better, after all.”