(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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
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