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.