(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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
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