Dan Curtis
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There’s more interest in fidelity to the original cast’s hair color than to the character of Barnabas Collins, who is neither the guilt-ridden loner of the TV series nor the bloodsucking savage of Curtis’ 1970 feature film “House of Dark Shadows.”
In the pantheon of cinematic devil dolls, Annabelle plays a game of inches, changing her position on the shelf or methodically rocking back and forth in a creaky chair, but never full-on running through the house wielding a weapon like the diminutive kewpie doll of Dan Curtis’s 1975 cult classic “Trilogy of Terror,” or Chucky of the “Child’s Play” franchise (who would sure make a swell beau for Annabelle if he weren’t already taken).
She’s no knife-wielding Chucky, from the Child’s Play series, or Richard Matheson’s great Zuni fetish doll from the 1975 TV movie Trilogy of Terror.
Annabelle's problems are legion but let's start with the bait-and-switch hook that promises Child's Play or the third movement of Trilogy of Terror and instead delivers a shadowy gargoyle who doesn't even have the courtesy to possess Annabelle; he just puppeteers her when the mood strikes.
The Conjuring (2013)
Directed by James Wan
influenced by Trilogy of Terror (1975), Burnt Offerings (1976)
Visuals
You often feel like he’s compulsively quoting something, as with the Scorsese-style opening shot that travels through the Perron family’s Rhode Island manse, showing us the main characters and their setting in a matter of seconds, or the various references to “Poltergeist,” “The Amityville Horror,” “Burnt Offerings” and so on.
The filmmakers try to generate some tension with a leering doll that's no match for Trilogy of Terror's Zuni doll, a guest appearance by the title apparition in Mama, and even the Pixar ball being rolled across a floor, but the return on investment is minimal — the concession prices will scare more people than any of these devices.
It moves the story from being an evil house as in The Haunting (1963, 1999) or Burnt Offerings (1976) to something else.
Instead, West seems to delightfully frolic in other terrifying remembrances from yesterdecade with an unsettling setting similar to “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974) and the creepy cinematic stylings of “Burnt Offerings” (1976) and – much more recently – “The Eyes of My Mother” (2016).
In this case, the trite theme has precedent: The first "Dark Shadows" spinoff feature film, 1970's "House of Dark Shadows," was advertised as "A Story of Blood Relations."
Fortunately, an impressive escalation of absurdities punctuate the climax, crafting a rather enjoyable derivation of countless prior works – from the unmentionable “Dolly Dearest” and “Dolls” to the moderately effective “Trilogy of Terror” and the long-lived series of “Puppet Master” and “Child’s Play.”
The Mortuary Collection (2020)
Directed by Ryan Spindell
influenced by Trilogy of Terror (1975)
Visuals
Shudder’s The Mortuary Collection is the rare modern horror anthology that attempts to bring in stylish, campy fun like the classics of the genre such as Creepshow and Trilogy of Terror .
Some of Matheson's TV fables ? the Twilight Zone story about the gremlin on the airplane wing, the Trilogy of Terror jape about a Zuni fetish doll chasing Karen Black around her apartment ?