(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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
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