Thriller Season Two - Part Six

KILL MY LOVE
(1962)
Dir - Herschel Daugherty
Overall: MEH
 
Arguably the lamest Thriller installment, "Kill My Love" is an adaptation of Kyle Hunt's 1958 novel of the same name, featuring square-jawed everyman Richard Carlson playing one of the biggest douchebags in small screen history.  Traveling for work, this gives Carlson the perfect opportunity to stack up a number of mistresses, and when his latest threatens to go to the Mrs. to tell all, he murders her off screen.  Then when his wife finds out and blackmails him into changing his job so that she can keep an eye on him, he kills her off screen.  Then when his son easily puts the pieces together, Carlson...well, you get the idea.  So in other words, it is a ridiculous tale about the most short-sighted serial killer imaginable, one who cannot keep it in his pants and garnishes zero sympathy from the audience.  Monotonous, dull, and dumb.

 

MAN OF MYSTERY
(1962)
Dir - John Newland
Overall: MEH

 

As the program neared its finality, Thriller started to fall back on non-supernatural crime stories again, and Robert Bloch's "Man of Mystery" is another inadequate one, despite some bizarre details.  Speaking of bizarre, the plot reveal is both ridiculous and convoluted, neither in an engaging fashion unfortunately.  On the plus side, a young Mary Tyler Moore is here as a lounge singer that various fellows have the hots for, one of them being Van Dreelen's weird tycoon who keeps a dining room table full of dummies at his spacious abode.  The plot twist reveals that this is hardly the most unorthodox thing that Dreelen is up to, but how Moore does not run away and stay away from him sooner comes off as implausible at best.  Bodies pile up and as the title would suggest, there is a mystery afoot, but the presentation is pedestrian, plus it ends on an unintentionally humorous and eye-ball rolling note.

 

THE INNOCENT BYSTANDERS
(1962)
Dir - John English
Overall: MEH

 

A remake of Robert Wise and Val Lewton's 1945 masterpiece The Body Snatcher, (which also featured Boris Karloff and memorably so at that), Thriller's "The Innocent Bystanders" is an adequate if subpar retelling of the frequented Burke and Hare case.  The plot is the same as it is in every cinematic version of the tale, where two immoral grave robbers resort to murder in order to beat the competition and put more coin in their pockets, selling to a morally corrupted doctor who just wants to do the right thing yet knows that his method of procuring fresh bodies to work on is corrupting his soul.  John Anderson does a fine job as the leader of the two scoundrels, with George Kennedy getting the more thankless role of the simpleton brute who does as he is told.  It has the right wet and cobbled street atmosphere for the period, (the first season's "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" also comes to mind), but the familiarity of the material is a detriment since there are no left turns anywhere to be found.

 

THE LETHAL LADIES
(1962)
Dir - Ida Lupino
Overall: GOOD

 

The last Thriller episode to be comprised of more than one story, "The Lethal Ladies" is also a rare one that opens straight away with Boris Karloff's introduction, after a brief psyche-out that establishes the theme of  "no wrath like a woman scorned".  Rosemary Murphy and Howard Morris appear as different characters in each segment, ("Murder on the Rocks" and "Goodbye Dr. Bliss", respectively), with things playing out in a foreseeable fashion where Morris is a unrepentant douchebag and Murphy snaps after having had enough of these odious male's shit.  The details in Joseph Payne Brennan's source materials are singular from each other though, and both Morris and Murphy get to flex as two characters with striking differences between them.  It is macabre enough to appease genre fans and a stand-out amongst the usual formula.

 

THE SPECIALISTS
(1962)
Dir - Ted Post
Overall: MEH

 

Unfortunately, NBC's Thriller closes out in an unremarkable fashion with arguably its most forgettable entry "The Specialists".  Not only is this Gordon Ash adaptation poorly suited to the modus operandi of the program, (even by the film noir standards that the series initially utilized in the first season), but its convoluted plot has little to latch on to.  Some jewel thieves off a guy before he squeals to the feds, another one comes in to make sure the offed-guy's sister keeps quiet, they fall in love yet appear to have already been in a relationship for some time, characters try to stay two steps ahead of other characters, and it ends anticlimactically with a quick fistfight on some stairs.  As usual, the cast does fine work with the material, plus director Ted Post and cinematographer Benjamin H. Kline have seen enough moody crime films to nail the right atmosphere.  For a show that hit its greatest heights when aggressively leaning into the macabre though, this is an unceremonious episode to go out on.

Thriller Season Two - Part Five

COUSIN TUNDIFER
(1962)
Dir - John Brahm
Overall: MEH

 

Comedic character actor Edward Andrews continues his typecasting as an unassuming and mild mannered suburbanite who wants to get rid of a relative because money in "Cousin Tundifer", his third and final Thriller appearance.  The shtick is worn-out at this point, both that of Andrews' nebbish performance and the gold-digging premise where a family member needs to be bumped off in order for someone to get a hold of their inheritance, but at least the means by which the story delivers that shtick is unique.  Here it is the living room of a house which inexplicably transports Andrews back a century, (he also looks exactly like an evil ancestor, whatever that signifies), though Boris Sobelman's teleplay is wishy-washy with the details.  The comeuppance finish is satisfying if goofy, but it fits the lighthearted tone that playfully dances around the macabre.

 

THE INCREDIBLE DOKTOR MARKESAN
(1962)
Dir - Robert Florey
Overall: GOOD

 

The final Thriller episode where Boris Karloff appeared in a role besides that as the host, "The Incredible Doktor Markesan" is a solid contender as the best of them.  More to the point, this has one of the horror icon's finest performances as the mysterious, solemn, and sinister title character.  Rarely was Karloff given the chance to convey such cold and aloof evilness, and just as he did in several of his earliest horror roles, he proves how commanding he can be with little dialog.  Also on board is Dick York and Carolyn Kearney as the near-penniless couple that intrude upon their weird uncle's unwilling hospitality, gradually discovering a dark secret that is just as weird.  Based on a short story by August Derleth and Mark Schorer, it has traces of old dark house and mad scientist motifs, yet the outcome is delightfully singular.  Loaded with atmosphere and a memorable finale, it is as good as the program ever got.

 

FLOWERS OF EVIL
(1962)
Dir - John Brahm
Overall: MEH

 

A skeleton that occasionally screams or cackles seems like ideal fodder for a horror tale, but Thriller's "Flowers of Evil" stagnates due to a few reasons.  One, the Hugh Walpole source material features the premise of someone murdering their spouse so that they can spend that sweet inheritance money with their lover, done here for the umpteenth time on the program.  Neither Luciana Paluzzi nor Kevin Hagen turn in charismatic performances as the conniving couple, and the same can be said for Jack Weston who also emerges to throw a monkey wrench into their adulterous scheme.  Also, the supernaturally-charged skeleton is wasted, with its only memorable activity happening in the opening scene where it morphs into the form of Paluzzi's recently murdered husband.  Stale and underwhelming, it fails to live up to its potential.

 

TIL DEATH DO US PART
(1962)
Dir - Herschel Daugherty
Overall: MEH

 

Characters in Thriller episodes do be murdering their significant others.  Henry Jones makes his second appearance on the program here, offing not one but TWO of his spouses as he keeps chasing another lady to ride off and start a new life with.  Clearly these assholes never learn.  Though noted author Robert Bloch wrote the teleplay and the results contain his patented form of clever use of comeuppance, the Western "Til Death Do Us Part" is unremarkable elsewhere.  The biggest issue is the redundancy of the plot, as it is difficult to become invested in yet another weaselly and wimpish husband with interchangeable nagging wives and an impatient mistress on the side.  Jones is unlikable in the lead as he is meant to be, yet nobody else on screen fares any better, so watching everyone go through only slight variations of the same motions that we have seen many characters go through on the show just leaves too much to be desired.

 

THE BRIDE WHO DIED TWICE
(1962)
Dir - Ida Lupino
Overall: MEH

 

Set in an undisclosed Latin American country, "The Bride Who Died Twice" has some swell performances and a sensationalized plot, but it is not one of Thriller's better, well, thrillers.  Scripted by Robert Hardy Andrews, (who penned five total episodes of the program), it pits a ruthless Colonel against a Governor, the later being successfully threatened to surrender his only daughter for marriage once he is also forced to send her fiance off to certain death on a futile military mission.  As the title would dictate, Mala Powers has other plans than to be married to an evil Joe De Santis, but no supernatural element is introduced and instead we have some death-faking shenanigans that are easily seen through.  It is fine as a melodramatic yarn and again, everyone on screen does their due diligence, (particularly Da Santis and Eduardo Ciannelli as his unwilling rival), but the plot is predictable and it never arrives anywhere interesting.

Thriller Season Two - Part Four

WAXWORKS
(1962)
Dir - Herschel Daugherty
Overall: MEH

 

Robert Bloch's "Waxworks" differentiates itself from the usual Mystery of the Wax Museum clones, even if it still takes its characters until the last scene to figure out what audience members have likely put together already.  That said, there is an effective enough twist to close things out after Oscar Homolka's tortured wax artist/museum curator explains everything in an expository dialog dump to a police detective that he intends on murdering.  Because bad guys be doing that.  Sadly, the story only comes alive in these closing moments, (the final shot of a melting skull being one of the program's finest), with the majority of it revolving around a humdrum investigation into a batch of murders that revolve around Homolka's place of business, as well as a time-stretching scene where French-accented Antoinette Bower goes on a date with one of the cops to a Chinese restaurant.  How exciting.

 

LA STREGA
(1962)
Dir - Ida Lupino
Overall: MEH

 

NBC's Thriller takes a stab at Italian horror with "La strega", literally translated to "The Witch", as is appropriate.  Though set in an undisclosed time in and undisclosed village, (with an international cast to boot, including Argentina-born Alejandro Rey, the heavily made-up and accented American Jeanette Nolan, and Swiss bombshell Ursula Andress), it has a deliberate Euro feel that leans into rural superstition and melodrama.  While Nolan makes a striking impression as the cackling old hag of the title who curses Rey into madness and tragedy, Andress gets little to do besides look wet and gorgeous while crying.  Also, the obligatory sabbat sequence is nothing more than professional dancers in leotards lightly groping each other while flashing jazz hands, coming off as ridiculous instead of enhancing any kind of occult atmosphere.

 

THE STORM
(1962)
Dir - Herschel Daugherty
Overall: GOOD

 

This McKnight Malmar short story adaptation essentially boils down to Nancy Kelly scaring the shit out of herself in her house during a dark and stormy night for upwards of fifty minutes.  Thankfully, frequent Thriller director Herschel Daugherty keeps up a tense pace in "The Storm", even if it arrives at a predicable conclusion and follows a strict structure where every commercial break ends with a loud soundtrack cue and Kelly finding something startling, usually to come right back to her relaxing since what she saw was not what she thought she saw.  Atmospherically speaking, the episode is a triumph with wailing winds and an incessant downpour accompanying the single location where the power is also out, to add insult to injury.  Also, cat lovers will be pleased that a feline both plays prominently in the proceedings and also survives.

 

A WIG FOR MISS DEVORE
(1962)
Dir - John Brahm
Overall: GOOD

 

One of the more clever Thriller episodes that also happens to have a ridiculous-on-paper premise, "A Wig for Miss Devore" manages an effective rug-pull after host Boris Karloff provides his introduction, setting things on a course that the opening scene could never broadcast.  August Derleth's source material finds Patricia Barry playing a delusional Norma Desmond-type prima donna who gets her shot at a Hollywood comeback via the supernaturally-charged hair device of the title, (which is the silly part), and what transpires is a wonderful tweak on curses, showbiz sleaze, vengeance, and the lengths that adoration-seeking women will go to in order to stay relevant.  Barry's performance is wonderfully hammy, and the unsettling hold that her sinister wig has on her affords several teasing death sequences that have a gruesome payoff in the finale.

 

THE HOLLOW WATCHER
(1962)
Dir - William F. Claxton
Overall: MEH

 

Some faux-Irish folklore finds its way into the Thriller installment "The Hollow Watcher", which is a story that should be more engaging considering that its primary monster is a seemingly sentient scarecrow.  Also, Warren Oates is here, which is always a good thing.  Playing an emasculated husband to Audrey Dalton's conniving immigrant wife, Oates' sheepish hillbilly performance eventually boils over into rage once Dalton's "brother" Sean McClory shows up from the homeland.  Jay Simms' script plays off of some small town Western motifs as well as superstitious villagers ones, yet it does so ineffectively.  Most of the emphasis is on three-way squabbling of the leads, (two of which are once again after some dead relative money, that tired ole gag), with the supernatural elements of the genuinely creepy title scarecrow thrown in more as an afterthought.

Thriller Season Two - Part Three

DIALOGUES WITH DEATH
(1961)
Dir - Herschel Daugherty
Overall: MEH

 

Besides his role as master of ceremonies, Boris Karloff gets the chance to play two additional characters in Thriller's "Dialogues with Death", the show's second episode to contain more than one story.  The other was the first season's "Trio of Terror", but this one sticks with only two tales, both of which indeed feature people conversing with the dead, in a manner of SPEAKING that is.  Nyuck nyuck.  The first story sees Karloff playing a morgue employee who is either a wacky ole kook or does in fact possess the ability to gently talk to the recently departed, learning their secrets and helping them pass on to the next stage.  The second story has Karloff and Estelle Winwood as a pair of eccentrics who assume that their "criminal on the run" nephew and his wife are already dead when they come to visit, so no use saving them when they venture their greedy mitts into the family crypt.

 

THE RETURN OF ANDREW BENTLEY
(1961)
Dir - John Newland
Overall: MEH

 

Though it boasts a chilling premise and features one of the creepier supernatural entities that early 1960s television ever produced, "The Return of Andrew Bentley" is given a flat presentation by director/actor John Newland.  Part of the problem is that Newland himself is stiff in the lead, lacking charisma as a returned nephew whose eccentric uncle Terence de Marney makes him vow to watch over and protect his final resting place for reasons that eventually reveal themselves.  The Richard Matheson source material has the right spooky details to work with, plus it is always a good idea to cast Reggie Nalder in a sinister role.  His borderline vampiric one here is only topped when we see the true form of his evil necromancer, who looks like some weird whale-faced alien demon.  Unfortunately, the episode is a talky affair that only comes to life at irregular intervals, representing a missed opportunity to showcase some black magic evilness.

 

THE REMARKABLE MRS. HAWK
(1961)
Dir - John Brahm
Overall: GOOD

 

Lighthearted yet still disturbing on paper, Thriller's "The Remarkable Mrs. Hawk" adapts a 1950 short story by Margaret St. Clair, one that manages to make a "nice" lady with a pig farm something to fear.  Jo Van Fleet turns in an ideal performance as the quirky title character, luring stragglers and handy men to her farm while coddling them and making them pancakes, only with a sinister agenda that is ridiculous, campy, and unsettling all at once.  Bruce Dern pops up in the opening scene, (even before we see his face, one can never mistake that voice), and speaking of never being able to mistake a voice, John Carradine is also here as a drifter who thinks that he can one-up Fleet before finding out all too late what she is really capable of.  The story also subverts the expectations of tradition comeuppance, instead emphasizing that whatever this Mrs. Hawk lady has been up to, she has been up to it for a long, long time, and her powers are outrageous enough that it is no wonder that she has not been bested.  Not that anyone of course would believe it if they knew.

 

PORTRAIT WITHOUT A FACE
(1961)
Dir - John Newland
Overall: MEH

 

Haunted paintings are a go-to motif for horror stories, and "Portrait Without a Face" was not even the first time that one was used for a Thriller episode, (the first season closer "The Grim Reaper" clearly being the best).  Here, the crotchety painter himself, (played uncredited by director John Newland), is murdered when he is about to commence work on his latest masterpiece, leaving a black canvas behind that mysteriously begins to fill itself in after his death as a self portrait that is bound to reveal the identity of the killer.  Ghostly goings-ons are implied, people argue, it grows monotonous after awhile, and there is a cop-our reveal that is logically sound in a melodramatic sense, yet it also underplays the otherworldly premise.  That said, there is still a supernatural element shoehorned in to close things out anyway, something that only confuses matters.

 

AN ATTRACTIVE FAMILY
(1962)
Dir - John Brahm
Overall: MEH

 

An odd entry in the Thriller series, "An Attractive Family" features some murdering relatives that nonchalantly off their victims in order to get their hands on inheritances so that they can blow the money and then do it all over again.  There are several familiar faces on board, (Richard Long, Leo G. Carroll, Otto Kruger), but the story eventually settles into the inner turmoil of a squeaky-voiced Joyce Bulifant, the sister of the Farmington's latest conquest who has a fear of heights and also wants to find out what happened to her doomed sibling.  Unfortunately, the story never settles into its macabre humor, and director John Brahm, (who handled twelve episodes for the series), maintains a flat presentation.  At least the bookending scenes involving the title family talking someone into hanging themselves comes off as sinister, but most of what happens in the middle simply meanders around.

Thriller Season Two - Part Two

MASQUERADE
(1961)
Dir - Herschel Daugherty
Overall: GOOD

 

Thriller finally gets around to some fanged undead in "Masquerade", be it in a roundabout comedic fashion.  The set up is a classic old dark house one where small screen mainstays Tom Poston and Elizabeth Montgomery, (portraying a playfully snippy married couple on their second honeymoon), knock on a creepy old mansion's door after their car breaks down.  They are greeted by a grizzled John Carradine because of course he was going to show up in one of these, and the next forty-odd minutes is a lighthearted and mildly spooky romp through various cliches that both Montgomery and Poston endlessly point out.  Based on Henry Kuttner's short story of the same name, the meta tale closes out on a groan-worthy twist, but it is fitting for the overall silly tone that plays up the genre's inherent campiness.

 

THE LAST OF THE SOMMERVILLES
(1961)
Dir - Ida Lupino
Overall: MEH

 

This was the first Thriller episode where Boris Karloff provided bookending narration instead of simply introducing things, and it also serves as the third that he would appear in besides his role as host.  In fact Karloff closes "The Last of the Sommervilles" out in character, playing a close friend of Lady Sommerville, (a bellowing and scenery-chewing Martita Hunt), standing outside of the spacious family mansion that now sits abandoned after various relatives have either met their grisly death or run off with oodles of inheritance money and then met their grisly death.  Besides Karloff, the small cast of players are either victims or get their just desserts, but Ida and R.M.H. Lupino's teleplay is not the most plausible as far as scheming murder plots are concerned.  The tone is hardly serious though, so it can afford some silly inconsistencies.  Still, there were several installments to this program that relied on the trope of deadbeats trying to get their hands on a rich relative's moolah, and besides Karloff's always appreciated presence, there is not much else here to elevate it.

 

LETTER TO A LOVER

(1961)
Dir - Herschel Daugherty
Overall: MEH

 

A return to the noir-adjacent crime stories that the program initially churned out, Thriller's "Letter to a Lover" is an adaptation of a Sheridan Gibney play, and it has the typical motifs of presenting several plausible suspects for an initial murder while infidelity and paranoia run amok.  Some of these angles prove to be red-herrings, which is a testament to the source material that while formulaic, it at least makes some attempts to throw the audience off and keep them guessing.  Ann Todd and Murray Matheson portray the less-than-happy married couple, both fleeing to a vacation home after a doctor that they are familiar with is found dead, a foolish move that only paints a bigger target on their backs.  The details grow more convoluted and less believable from there, but it at least has a tragic and macabre finale that is appreciated.

 

A THIRD FOR PINOCHLE
(1961)
Dir - Herschel Daugherty
Overall: GOOD

 

Character actor Edward Andrews shows up again in Thriller's "A Third for Pinochle", essentially playing the same scheming husband that he had in the previous season's "A Good Imagination".  This unhappily married man is only different in his comparatively more docile temperament, plotting the elaborate slaying of his wife while exhibiting a sheepish persona that caters to every whim of the nagging Mrs.  The curious thing is that once the murder is committed, Andrews proceeds to do everything in his power to raise suspicion on himself, openly jesting with anyone who will listen, (including a detective that visits his home), about how his wife's death is a blessing that awards him oodles of cash.  The pinochle angle comes in with the quirky elderly sister neighbors across the street who manage to hoodwink Andrews when he thinks that he is scot-free, providing the story with a wonderfully silly comeuppance angle to go out on.

 

THE CLOSED CABINET
(1961)
Dir - Ida Lupino
Overall: MEH

 

Taking its cue from Lewis Allen's The Uninvited in the sense that the main characters act more with wonder than terror at the presence of a ghost, "The Closed Cabinet" is conventional and humdrum Gothic horror of the supernatural variety.  It concerns a three-century-running curse, (a common go-to), where a family will suffer a murder every generation, typically around the appearance of the lovely specter in a painting who both invoked the curse and dilly-dallies around until the episode reaches an acceptable time to end.  Said ghost, (portrayed by Patricia Manning), makes random appearances before disappearing, hypnotizes Olive Sturgess, and defeating her revolves around an anticlimactic reveal of a parchment in a cabinet, as the episode's title would allude to.  The performances are acceptable, (as is the spooky castle scenery), but Kay Lenard and Jess Carneol's script fails to offer up any interesting characters, or an interesting plot, or any interesting set pieces.  In other words, it is competent yet dull.

Thriller Season Two - Part One

WHAT BECKONING GHOST?

(1961)

Dir - Ida Lupino

Overall: GOOD

 

Kicking things off with the good ole "gaslighting a rich hysterical woman into death in order to gain her inheritance and share it with another woman who you are having an affair with that is putting on an benevolent act" gag, the Thriller second season opener "What Beckoning Ghost?" delivers another memorable supernaturally-charged ending, something that the program was becoming increasingly adept at.  This one adapts the Harold Lawlor short story, sticking to the outright horror formula that producer William Frye fancied from his tenure on the previous season onward.  It benefits from a small cast and a single location, with a story that is predictable to a point yet pleasantly ups the creepiness where it counts, bypassing just being one of many tales where an asshole spouse wants to get a lot of money.

GUILLOTINE

(1961)

Dir - Ida Lupino

Overall: GOOD

 

This adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's short story "Guillotine" was the third and last such retelling of the author's work that Thriller would do, and it is one of the series' episodes that is more akin to the concurrently running Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  This is to say that the final act is one elongated set piece that seemingly plays out in real time as a convicted man tries to avoid his execution by means of a particular loophole in 19th century French law.  Director Ida Lupino, (in her only work from behind the lens on the program), expertly stages such a white-knuckled set piece, made more impressive since the outcome is preordained yet still keeps the viewer's eyes glued to the small screen as far as how it will precisely go down.  The story even manages to make the executioner the most benevolent character, helped by the sympathetic performance of Robert Middleton, a character actor who usually played one-note villains.

THE PREMATURE BURIAL

(1961)

Dir - Doughlas Heyes

Overall: GOOD

 

Predating the Roger Corman American International Pictures adaptation by one year, "The Premature Burial" is the only work by Edgar Allan Poe which made it onto NBC's Thriller program.  This was also the second story to feature Boris Karloff beyond just his steady role as the show's host, here playing the doctor who uncovers the scheming and adulterous deeds of his close friend's wife Patricia Medina.  Sidney Blackmer portrays said buddy, a capitalistic millionaire with an intense fear of being buried alive which proves unfortunate for him, to say the least.  The tale follows a familiar pattern, (plus the motif of greedy spouses trying to do away with their significant other in order to get their money was growing tired), but Karloff is naturally wonderful and the ending is another creepy showstopper.

THE WEIRD TAILOR

(1961)

Dir - Herschel Daugherty

Overall: GOOD

 

The Robert Bloch-authored "The Weird Tailor" would get a revamp eleven years later in Amicus' stellar Asylum anthology film, but its initial presentation here differentiates itself enough, as well as being another memorable supernatural installment to the Thriller program.  Just as it was in the Amicus version, the title is misleading since the tailor himself is not the "weird" one, but the otherworldly situation that he finds himself in sure as hell is.  Said tailor is portrayed by character actor Henry Jones as an odious curmudgeon who is needlessly cruel to his wife; a woman who is so crippled by loneliness and abuse that her only solace is in tenderly conversing to herself with a life-sized dummy.  The occult plays into things right from the opening scene, and even if one can guess where things are headed, (especially if any viewer's have seen the aforementioned Asylum), it is tightly scripted and leads to a finale that is equally absurd and creepy.

GOD GRANTE THAT SHE LYE STILLE

(1961)

Dir - Herschel Daugherty

Overall: MEH

 

One of many Thriller episodes to be directed by Herschel Daugherty, (as well as the final one that Henry Daniell appeared in), "God Grante That She Lye Stille" hits many of the supernatural Gothic ghost/witch motifs, if not uniquely.  An adaptation of Lady Cynthia Asquith's short story of the same name, it features Sarah Marshall in a dual role as a woman who is plagued by her black arts-practicing, condemned 17th century ancestor and as said ancestor herself.  As the latter, Marshall is a dead ringer for Barbara Steele in certain scenes, her ethereal form threatening to reap her vengeance until she is granted a physical body once more, presumably to reap more vengeance with.  The narrative unfortunately never picks up steam and most of the plotting revolves around us being told that Marshall acts in an aggressive fashion without showing us that she does, only for Ronald Howard to show back up as her doctor and act concerned.

Thriller Season One - Part Seven

MR. GEORGE
(1961)
Dir - Ida Lupino
Overall: MEH

 

Taking the retreaded trope of wicked, money-grubbing relatives and an imaginary friend made real, "Mr. George" is a serviceable supernatural yarn for the Thriller program, if not an exemplary one.  It is an adaptation of the 1947 short story of the same name by prolific author August Derleth/Stephen Grenden, granting little Gina Gillespie's protagonist a guardian angel in the form of the title character who is her actual guardian that is now recently departed.  The specter sticks around long enough to keep Gillespie safe from the greedy family that she is forced to live with; her cold-hearted aunt, her mentally unstable and childlike other aunt, and her bulbous uncle.  Justice is served in the end, but since the story lacks both mystery and chills, it fails to go anywhere compelling within its framework.

 

THE TERROR IN TEAKWOOD
(1961)
Dir - Paul Henreid
Overall: GOOD

 

Taking the "killer amputated hands on a concert pianist" gimmick from Maurice Renard's 1920 novel Les Mains d'Orlac, "The Terror in Teakwood" pulls off some ghoulish atmosphere and at least one set piece that ranks as one of the most memorable in the entire Thriller series.  Guy Rolfe portrays a musician who is both loathed by many and obsessively covets the skills of his dead rival, going to some fiendish means to procure those skills.  Boosted by horror heavyweights Hazel Court and Reggie Nalder, the audience knows what is going on before the characters do, but director Paul Henreid expertly wields Alan Caillou's script, which is actually an adaptation of a Harold Lawlor short story and not directly taken from Renard's often-filmed and aforementioned novel.  The finale is the real showstopper and one that is worthy of Court's famous screams, making this a fun precursor to the EC Comics/Dr. Terror's House of Horrors segment "Disembodied Hand".

 

PRISONER IN THE MIRROR
(1961)
Dir - Herschel Daugherty
Overall: GOOD

 

Baritone-voiced leading man Lloyd Bochner goes up against a supernaturally-charged mirror, (Because what horror program would be complete without one of those?), in the apply titled Thriller installment "Prisoner in the Mirror".  Also showing up for the third time no less is Henry Daniell, here portraying an 18th century sorcerer who hides out in the large reflective antique until the next hapless sap gazes into it, falls under its spell, transports his soul into the mirror, and therefor leaves his physical body vulnerable for Daniell to hop into it and cause chaos to his heart's content before jumping out of it again and leaving his victim to suffer the consequences.  The premise is solid as well as grimly resolved, leaving everything in shambles as Daniell's reign of body-hopping terror claims one more casualty for the road.

 

DARK LEGACY
(1961)
Dir - John Brahm
Overall: GOOD

 

At this late point in the first season of Thriller, the program was establishing itself in the horror vein with comparatively more memorable results than its heavy crop of crime related stories that kicked things off.  On that note, "Dark Legacy" basks in its appropriate genre even more explicitly than most, opening with Harry Townes, (in a dual role no less), overacting to the gills as a mad scientist-looking occult wizard who forfeits his life and bequeaths his demon-summoning powers upon his nightclub magician nephew, (Townes again).  Occult books that appear spontaneously and terrorize women, smoke-fueled summoning, disembodied eyeballs, and Henry Silva looking like Henry Silva, there is plenty of ghoulish eye candy and wonderful set pieces to enhance John Tomerlin's campy yet still sinister script.  Whenever Golden Era Hollywood ventured into any kind of Aleister Crowley/King Solomon magik, the results were naturally sensationalized, but it makes for some fun and macabre window dressing when done as well as here.

 

PIGEONS FROM HELL
(1961)
Dir - John Newland
Overall: GOOD

 

Robert E. Howard gets the Thriller treatment with "Pigeons from Hell", based on his 1934 short story of the same name and allegedly the first cinematic adaptation for any of his works.  As the title would suggest, it does contain birds that strike terror into pedestrians, but the story has a ghoulish outcome that has nothing to do with airborne assailants.  When two brother's automobile breaks down in the Deep South, they flee to an abandoned plantation after a flock of pigeons descends upon them.  Something happens to one of the siblings, the local sheriff gets involved, a gaslit lamp fails to work in a particular area of the creepy old mansion, and an expository dialog dump reveals a macabre family secret.  The set design is superb, plus director John Newland, (in his first of four assignments for the program), maintains an eerie atmosphere throughout.

 

THE GRIM REAPER
(1961)
Dir - Herschel Daugherty
Overall: GOOD

 

Closing out the first season with one of their strongest installments, Thriller's "The Grim Reaper" takes the familiar tropes of a cursed painting and greedy relatives trying to get their mitts on a rich relative's money, and throws some wicked twists and an exemplary ending into the mix.  The program must have paid all of Henry Daniell's bills for the first several months that it was in production, this marking his fourth appearance, be it a small one in the opening scene where we get our first glimpse of the Grim Reaper artwork, whose painter hangs himself immediately after its completion.  Fast forward several decades, and William Shatner's wealthy and alcohol enjoying aunt has purchased the painting for a goof.  Viewers can guess that the bodies will only keep pilling up from there.  The final showdown between Shatner and whatever diabolical force inhabits such cursed art is a suggestive tour de force and easily one of the small screen's most satisfyingly creepy moments.

Thriller Season One - Part Six

PAPA BENJAMIN
(1961)
Dir - Ted Post
Overall: MEH

 

Fans of Amicus' initial horror anthology film Dr. Terror's House of Horrors will recognize the premise at hand in Thriller's "Papa Benjamin", a tale where a jazz musician thinks that he can get away with swiping the melody from a voodoo ritual to play for eager audiences in the clubs.  Both stories, (as well as one done for the CBS radio program Suspense), were based on the Cornell Woolrich source material of the same name, and this one is given a mediocre treatment that fails to emphasize much supernatural mood and seems to make up its otherworldly logic as it goes on.  John Ireland comes off as miserable throughout, even before he is cursed by the practitioners of Hollywood's favorite ethnic religion to use when they need a sinister variant to Western beliefs.  The extend of Woolrich's curse only seems concerned with getting the episode to forty-nine minutes, ending in an anticlimactic fashion that promises more than it delivers.

 

LATE DATE
(1961)
Dir - Herschel Daugherty
Overall: MEH

 

Another Cornell Woolrich story gets the Thriller treatment in "Late Date", one of the less interesting of its non-horror titles.  From this moment on, William Frye would be the sole producer for the program and would shy away more from the crime gone wrong style of earlier installments, but not before this one got out the door.  Most of the episode is nothing more than Larry Pennell hilariously and badly lying on the phone and trying to get rid of a dead body, one which belongs to his brother's adulterating wife that he came home to discover and is now covering up for him.  Edward Platt portrays said brother and seems understandably aloof before deciding to turn himself in, undermining both everything that Pennell went through and everything that the audience had to sit through.  It is a humdrum watch that fails to deliver any suspense, serving as just a place holder for the better installments surrounding it.

 

YOURS TRULY, JACK THE RIPPER
(1961)
Dir - Ray Milland
Overall: MEH

 

Notable as the only Thriller episode to be directed by famed thespian Ray Milland, "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" updates the infamous London serial killer to present day, differentiate this interpretation from the slew of other period-set ones that used the Ripper as antagonist.  Another Robert Bloch adaptation, the same M.O. seems to be at play from seventy years earlier when several ladies of the evening turn up brutally slain, down to the same time of murder and distance apart from each other in which they appear.  A Scotland Yard psychologist has the wild theory that this Ripper is the same one from before, granted immortality due to some specific blood ritual.  The killer reveal is one that audience members may suspect, but there is some gloomy atmosphere on display to go along with slayings of the suggestive small screen variety.

 

THE DEVIL'S TICKET
(1961)
Dir - Jules Bricken
Overall: MEH

 

Robert Block penning the actual teleplay this time, "The Devil's Ticket" has some macabre Faustian appeal despite its inconsistencies.   MacDonald Carey plays a down-on-his-luck artist with the charisma of soiled wool, having an affair with an odious woman that he remains inexplicably committed to even as his actual wife seems patient, understanding, and supportive of his career.  As the Great Deceiver himself, John Emery plays it with diabolical charm, even if his scheme of procuring souls has a readily apparent loophole that every audience member shall successfully predict will be exploited.  The story still packs in a left turn here or there, but its lousy protagonist, loose plotting, and Patricia Medina's rotten mistress all help to sink the ship.

 

PARASITE MANSION
(1961)
Dir - Herschel Daugherty
Overall: MEH

 

An old dark house installment to the Thriller program, "Parasite Mansion" is the second such episode where Tom Nolan plays a disturbed kid with a penchant for shooting live ammunition at adults.  The actual tale, (based on a short story by Mary Elizabeth Counselman), has the usual house full of reclusive weirdos whose abode someone from the city is forced to stay at when her car breaks down on a detour.  From there though, things go in a singular path where the family secret has something to do with Jeanette Nolan's cackling "Granny", a woman who is kept locked up in a room, (Spider Baby's Beverly Washburn, playing a similar enough character here), and either a poltergeist or some telekinetic powers running amok.  Atmospheric with some premo scenery chewing from Nolan yes, but it also drags regularly.

 

A GOOD IMAGINATION
(1961)
Dir - John Brahm
Overall: GOOD

 

The first Thriller episode to take a deliberately campy approach to its material, "A Good Imagination" sees a perfectly cast Edward Andrews plotting various macabre schemes against his compulsively adulteress wife and her lovers.  Robert Bloch authored the teleplay here, making references to Edgar Allan Poe's ole "entombing people alive behind a wall of bricks" gag, which makes sense as something that Andrew's villainous protagonist would use since he is an admitted bookworm.  Andrews' performance is the main attraction, maintaining a consistently cheery and even effeminate demeanor as he charms everybody around him that he fully intends on getting rid of through ghastly means.  Such deaths are clever, as is the comeuppance twist in the end which proves that our bespectacled and delightful serial murderer is not as ingenious as he would like to believe.

Thriller Season One - Part Five

THE MERRIWEATHER FILE
(1961)
Dir - John Brahm
Overall: MEH

 

This Lionel White adaptation of his 1959 novel of the same name focuses on a man who is accused of murder and vehemently pleads his innocence, even though one detail after the other more directly implicates him.  "The Merriweather File" unveils more pieces to the puzzle at a satisfactory rate while a dashingly-mushtached James Gregory does everything in his power to save his buddy Ross Elliott from execution, meanwhile infidelity plays an increasing role of motivation for almost everyone involved.  Unfortunately, the final scene is a lengthy expository dialog dump set some time after the events of the main narrative, an expository dialog dump that clears up every last loose end and begs the question of how the police detective delivering it has such information at his disposal in the first place, not to mention why is it coming out now when it could have saved a somewhat "innocent" man.

 

THE FINGERS OF FEAR
(1961)
Dir - Jules Bricken
Overall: MEH

 

When all signs point to a heavy-set, schlubby, social awkward outcast as the culprit to a slew of grisly child murders and the police nab their man halfway through the story, one is bound to guess that the real killer is still at large.  This is confirmed quickly enough in "The Fingers of Fear", based on Philip MacDonald's short story of the same name where we meet a man who fits a different description than a bulbous fellow lurking in the bushes, yet is clearly up to no good as he spends an entire afternoon with a child that he lures with a laughing Italian doll.  The narrative never explicitly states what traumatic series of events have led Thayer Roberts to murder children and treat said doll as if it was his own daughter, but the unsettling premise is handled in a user friendly manner that is fitting for small screen entertainment of the era, meaning that there is a reason for exploitative details to be left out of the equation.

 

WELL OF DOOM
(1961)
Dir - John Brahm
Overall: GOOD

 

Henry Daniell returns in "Well of Doom", his second of five appearances in a Thriller episode.  He is given a good amount of screen time here in some ghastly makeup, presenting himself as some variant of the Devil who is able to miraculously light fires and has the towering future James Bond henchman Richard Kiel at his beck and call.  An adaptation of a John Clemons story, it leans into the horror tropes with Daniell's seemingly supernatural powers, ghoulish look, and copious amounts of fog poured over the English moors.  It also has some suspenseful moments as Ronald Howard tries to flee his captors and rescue his fiance, leading to a finale that takes some laughable liberties as far as logic is concerned.  Still, it is a fun and macabre installment to the series, convoluted plot and all.

 

THE ORDEAL OF DR. CORDELL
(1961)
Dir - Laslo Benedek
Overall: MEH

 

The first Thriller episode to have a sci-fi angle, "The Ordeal of Dr. Cordell" opens with a chemical experiment gone awry where Robert Vaughan collapses due to some dangerous vapors and wakes up with a crippling sensitivity to ringing bells that causes him to black out werewolf style and go into murderous rages.  These killing outbursts are never shown to the audience, which is fitting since Vaughan's doomed protagonist wakes up with no recollection of having committed them, leaving both he and the viewer in the dark as to the violent specifies.  It is a sufficient way for a television program to work around the content's more ghastly ingredients, but Donald S. Sanford's script offers no other surprises outside of its premise.

 

TRIO OF TERROR
(1961)
Dir - Ida Lupino
Overall: GOOD

 

NBC's Thriller attempts a different formula for the season one installment "Trio of Terror".  Though the program was an anthology one by nature where each week presented a different stand-alone story, this one features three of them within a single episode time frame.  Boris Karloff introduces them all as he is wont to do, and they are all unrelated besides the fact that they each fit snugly into the horror genre.  The first concerns a man who murders his warlock uncle, (the warlock part being unbeknownst to him), the second has a man who wins an obscene amount of money at a castle casino and then stays for the night where his bed has other ideas for him, and the last and best features a criminal on the run who holds up in a wax museum where the sculptures are anything but wax.

Thriller Season One - Part Four

THE HUNGRY GLASS

(1961)

Dir - Douglas Heyes
Overall: GOOD

 

Two Thriller stories in a row to adapt one from Robert Boch, "The Hungry Glass" was also the first to air in 1961 and featured William Shatner in the lead.  Standard haunted house motifs are at play, (a couple moves into a spacious abode with a murderous past that was not divulged to them, characters see things which are brushed off by other characters as mere impressionable tricks of the eye, and the whole ordeal becomes exponentially more stressful as it goes on), but it leads to a grisly finish.  Plus, these particular malevolent specters make competitively quick work of their prey instead of leading them around for weeks on end before making their presence undeniable.  A macabre backstory and fitting cinematography from Lionel Lindon, (who also shot many Night Gallery episodes), also helps.

 

THE POISONER
(1961)
Dir - Herschel Daugherty
Overall: MEH

 

When two gold diggers marry each other, (each thinking that the other is loaded to the gills yet actually neither of them are), frustrations are bound to arise.  Thus is the starting point to Thriller's "The Poisoner" where Murray Matheson's answer to every problem is just to drop deadly powder into some brandy for his undesirables to drink.  Surprising to no one, (least of all him), this haphazard scheme is easily found out, yet because all evidence is circumstantial, Matheson correctly guesses that his wife will not be able to testify against him, he will walk away a free man, and that he will not be able to be tried again due to a double jeopardy clause in English law.  Matheson's performance is appropriately arrogant and sleazy, plus the means of his comeuppance is satisfactory, with the episode standing as one of its earlier period-set ones that was working outside the confines of the horror genre that it would later lean into.

 

MAN IN THE CAGE
(1961)
Dir - Gerald Mayer
Overall: MEH

 

A noir excursion on foreign soil, "Man in the Cage" boasts a misleading title since there is a man and there is a cage, but the two only meet for a single set piece hangup midway through that is easily resolved.  Guy Stockwell and Philip Carey play a set of square-jawed brothers, neither sharing screen time, as the former goes missing after the opening scene and the latter travels to Tangier to investigate his disappearance.  The John Holbrook Vance source material has enough going on in it as we meet some shady characters, an enticing dame, future-Donatello Barry Gordon playing a shifty tyke who plays whatever side that he can to make some money, and everybody wondering who they can trust along the way.  It never gets that suspenseful though, despite the classy production and swell performances.

 

CHOOSE A VICTIM
(1961)
Dir - Richard Carlson
Overall: MEH

 

The Thriller episode "Choose a Victim" explores the idea of two people pulling a con on each other, except that neither of them knows that they are being conned.  It is melodramatic, far-fetched, and cliche-ridden, yet some enjoyment can be had within the details of how exactly Larry Blyden and Susan Oliver are out for their own means.  George Bellak's teleplay hinges on the frequented idea of star-crossed lovers who have to sneak away to be together, which always means that the only way out of their predicament is to murder whoever is in their way.  To get away with this of course requires a herculean amount of good luck, as well as none of the several other characters noticing the two lovebirds together for the weeks before such murdering is committed as not to cast suspicion on them.  When will these kids ever learn?

 

HAY-FORK AND BILL-HOOK
(1961)
Dir - Herschel Daugherty
Overall: MEH

 

Though it is brooding with fog-laden occult atmosphere and deals explicitly with witch paranoia, the Thriller installment "Hay-Fork and Bill-Hook" boasts a subpar story that fails to do anything unique within its trope-heavy framework.  We have a Scotland Yard detective arriving in a remote Wales village that is overrun with superstition and may as well be the same town of Whitewood from John Llewellyn Moxey's The City of the Dead, or home to the Slaughtered Lamb from John Landis' An American Werewolf in London.  The villagers immediately act fishy and suspicious towards these out of towners, (Kenneth Haigh and Audrey Dalton, respectively), and any viewer can predict that such scaredey cat locals with a proud penchant for burning witches at the stake will attempt just such a thing by episode's end.  It gets by to a point with is heavy scenery and persistently macabre mood, but it is also low on action, predictable, and generic in execution.