Trilogy of Terror

Trilogy of Terror is a 1975 American made-for-television anthology horror film directed by Dan Curtis and starring Karen Black. It features three segments, each based on unrelated short stories by Richard Matheson. The first follows a college professor who seeks excitement with her students; the second is about twin sisters who have a bizarre relationship. These two segments were adapted by William F. Nolan. The third, adapted by Matheson himself, focuses on a woman terrorized by a Zuni fetish doll in her apartment. Black stars in all three segments, and plays dual roles in the second.

The film was first aired as an ABC Movie of the Week on March 4, 1975. Black initially turned down the project, but reconsidered when her then-husband, Robert Burton, was cast in the first segment "Julie". A television film sequel titled Trilogy of Terror II, written and also directed by Dan Curtis, was released in 1996.

College student Chad Rogers suddenly begins lusting after his straitlaced English professor, Julie Eldridge; he tells his friend Eddie Nells that the thought of what she is like naked just popped into his head. He asks her out, but she declines, as professors are forbidden from dating students. Later that evening, Chad watches Julie undressing in her room through a window. The next day, he asks Julie out again, and she accepts the offer.

During the date at a drive-in theater, Chad spikes Julie's drink, rendering her unconscious, and drives her to a motel. After checking them in as husband and wife, he photographs her in a variety of sexually provocative positions then drives her home. When she regains consciousness, he tells her that she fell asleep during the movie.

Chad develops the photographs and uses them to blackmail Julie into submitting to his sexual demands, even coercing her participation in orgies. Julie's roommate Anne becomes concerned about her repeated late night outings and unusually subdued manner, but Julie refuses to confide in her.

After one last sexual escapade with Chad, Julie gives him a poisoned drink and reveals that she manipulated their affair from the beginning, telepathically implanting lust for her inside Chad's mind. She informs him that she has carried out numerous affairs with young men to satiate her appetite for sexual thrills and danger, but inevitably gets bored, as she has now grown bored of Chad. Chad collapses from the poison. Julie then drags him into the darkroom and sets fire to the incriminating photographs.

Julie later adds a newspaper article reporting Chad's death in a house fire, to a scrapbook of articles depicting students who met similar fates. There is a knock at the door, and a male student in need of a tutor enters.

Millicent, a prudish brunette, is consumed by hatred for her twin sister Therese, a seductive and mean-spirited blonde. Millicent confronts Thomas Anmar, Therese's lover, and reveals that Therese told her all about an unspecified immoral event that happened during Thomas and Therese's sexual relationship. She explains that Therese does not care for Thomas and is only trying to corrupt him with her evil. Millicent confides in her friend and family therapist, Dr. Ramsey, that her sister had engaged in sex with their father, poisoned their mother, and is holding Millicent captive inside the family mansion, while gloating to Millicent about her deeds. Ramsey visits the mansion to speak with Therese, who comes on to Ramsey then furiously throws him out of the house when he refuses her sexual advances.