About two decades after Karen Black secured her genre dominance in a trilogy of macabre tales under the steady direction of Dan Curtis, we get three more yarns. Black, unfortunately, does not return but Curtis does and he brings along the nightmarish Zuni fetish doll as well. Lovely Lysette Anthony handles the heavy lifting of starring in all three stories, she’s no Karen Black but nobody is or ever will be. The Graveyard Rats follows two lovers who murder the woman’s elderly asshole of a husband. The grouchy prick knows she has another lover but still keeps her in his will as his sole inheritor. He just demands she cools them loins while he’s still kicking and adheres to his steen rules. He’s also got some blackmail on her if she decides to just leave him to be with her man, poor or not. That’s why her slightly insane paramour sends the old bastard and his wheelchair down the stairs, looking like a fatal accident. The grave-robbing cemetery caretaker (the always welcome Geoffrey Lewis) Stubbs lets the not-so-bereaved Laura know that where he’s been ordered to bury her husband is a hotbed for an army of giant and preternaturally intelligent rats. The angry murderer she now finds herself with thinks it’s all a bullshit scheme to get them to purchase a more expensive coffin. The will is read and it turns out the recently departed dickhead converted all his assets to Swiss bank accounts and they won’t be able to touch them unless they have some codes. Unable to find any records, the couple realize the bastard probably buried the information with himself in an antique watch with a hidden compartment he demanded to be laid to rest with. The desperate duo head to the cemetery and those titular vermin are about to get themselves some fresh food. Lysette gets to scheme and giant vermin get to eat in a standard but still fun tale of macabre karma. Bobby finds a grieving mother monkey-pawing everything up when she uses black magic to bring her dead child back from the grave. We’ve seen the warning one hundred times before and the exact story already in 77’s Dead of Night anthology. It’s fine as the returned kid comes back but he definitely has brought something else less than human back within him. Finally, He Who Kills offers up the further adventures of that popular Zuni fetish doll and is the best portion of the movie. Beginning with the aftermath of the fateful encounter between woman and doll and woman and mother, the crispy creep is removed from the oven by the police as they go through the double homicide crime scene. Our girl Lysette plays the likable Dr. Simpson, a noted whatever scientist/doctor she is… ethnologist? A desperate police force has tasked her with determining just what the hell the freaky doll is and how it may tie into the murders. Well, the little bastard gets back up and the skeleton crew at the museum get their asses slaughtered as Dr Simpson goes up against the vicious little thing. An expanded setting, a familiar threat and a sympathetic protagonist make for a fun time. The whole thing isn’t anything special but it’s enjoyable and some fine lazy-day watching if you’re in the right mood for a low-effort anthology offering up minor thrills and minimal investment on the viewer’s part… and sometimes that’s all I want.
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