Trilogy of Terror (1975)

Trilogy of Terror
Directed by Dan Curtis
Written by William F. Nolan and Richard Matheson

Classic made for TV horror anthology, three stories, each starring Karen Black and based on stories by Richard Matheson, who I will always confuse with Robert Bloch.  While Karen Black is awesome in it, the fact that in each story she plays a mild-mannered woman with a dark, dangerous side makes the whole thing a bit samey.

Story one has a college professor being sexually blackmailed by her students.  Story two is a "these two people are clearly the same person with a split personality" joint, written so obviously I thought there must have been another twist coming.

But we came for the Zuni doll.  The last segment has Black being chased around her apartment by a tiny Zuni fetish doll in a sequence that many find terrifying but which is also objectively silly.  I got a new puppy right before watching this, so I was used to having something running around and slashing at your ankles.

Scarier than the doll was the creepy sexual subtext which I missed watching this as a child, with references to off-camera gang rape and incest.

On Amazon Video