Inside the Closet
College student Gail Aynsley (Roberta Weiss), having nowhere else on her campus to take up residence, is forced to take up a room for rent in the house of Dr. Fenner (Fritz Weaver), the dean of the college's veterinary school. Gail soon discovers a small closet inside her new room, which slowly creaks open when she isn't watching. Finding the inside of the closet appears decorated as a child's bedroom, as well as the fact that Fenner's daughter had died a while ago, Gail hopes to either track down the source of the disturbances, or get out of the house while she still can.
Tropes:
- Bait-and-Switch: Lizzie ends up clutching Fenner's leg, possibly intending to kill and eat him next. As it turns out, she's his daughter, and Fenner picks her up and carries her off to hear a bedtime story.
- Casting Gag: Fritz Weaver, who plays Dr. Fenner, previously played Dexter Stanley from "The Crate" in George Romero's film Creepshow. Whereas Dexter was left scrambling to get rid of a man-eating monster by any means necessary, Fenner dotes upon a man-eating monster and treasures her with his life.
- Downer Ending: Gail ends up dead, her mother is left a nervous wreck, and Dr. Fenner gets away with feeding yet another victim to Lizzie.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Fenner is quite doting to his monstrous daughter, who in turn seems to truly care for him.
- Fed to the Beast: Gale is a young college student moving into the questionable Dr. Fenner's house. She's killed by a small monster living in the professor's closet, which turns out to be his daughter, and he intended to have this girl move in with him so he could feed her to said daughter. The next morning, he dismisses her death and keeps it secret when her mother, worried where her daughter disappeared to, calls to find her. It's also implied that she wasn't the first victim, nor the last.
- Karma Houdini: Fenner routinely gets away with feeding people to his monstrous daughter, and Gail is his latest statistic.
- Madwoman in the Attic: Dr. Fenner secretly keeps his monster of a daughter hidden behind a small closet, and intentionally feeds people who rent the room said closet is in to her.
- Mythology Gag: The soundtrack from Creepshow (specifically from "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" and "Something to Tide You Over"), which series producer George Romero directed, regularly enters and leaves the background music. There's also the above-mentioned Casting Gag.
- Neck Snap: How Lizzie ends up killing Gail, before dragging her corpse into her room to do God knows what to her.
- Nothing Is Scarier: We last see Gail having her neck broken by Lizzie, who takes her corpse back into the closet with her. Who knows what she plans to do with her.
- Recycled Soundtrack: A good chunk of the background music is reused from Creepshow.
- Taxidermy Terror: All sorts of stuffed and mounted animals are present throughout Fenner's house, all of them in highly threatening poses and expressions.
- Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: Gail discovers, to her horror, that the noises she keeps hearing at night in the room she's renting from Dr. Fenner is a small monster that proceeds to murder her. The ending further reveals that said monster is his daughter, and he lures people into said room so they can become food for her.
