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.

Thriller Season One - Part Three

THE FATAL IMPULSE
(1960)
Dir - Gerald Mayer
Overall: MEH

 

Prolific character actor Elijah Cook Jr. kicks things off in "The Fatal Impulse", an adaptation of a John D. MacDonald short story whose plot almost entirely consists of police detectives trying to locate a bomb.  This sounds like it may be a mundane watch, and in some respects it is since it is a lot of back and forth between potential victims who may have had an exploding device dropped into their purse or pockets when Cook's deranged terrorist panics after botching the job.  Robert Lansing shares the viewer's frustration as he spends an entire day driving all over town, frantically interviewing people, and checking their bags without any luck, that is until the final moments where on top of saving the day, he is also rewarded with a promising romance from Whitney Blake whose pushy boyfriend runs away George Costanza-style at the first threat of blowing up.

 

THE BIG BLACKOUT
(1960)
Dir - Maurice Geraghty
Overall: MEH

 

A little bit of mixed identity and recovering addiction commingle in the Thriller installment "The Big Blackout", which is not one of the more gripping crime dramas for the program.  The source material here is the Don Tracy novel of the same name which was published the same year, and it has Whitney Blake trying to stay on the wagon after spending several years in a memory haze from alcoholism, all the while mobsters are tracking down a possible former associate who conducted shady business.  Some women are thrown into the mix and roughed up, as is Tracy who has the right kind of big lug physique to engage in fisticuffs of his own in order to get to the bottom of what is going on without his loved ones being continually threatened.  Nothing exciting happens though and the performances are equally just dependable.

 

KNOCK THREE-ONE-TWO
(1960)
Dir - Herman Hoffman
Overall: GOOD

 

One of the better Thriller installments from before the show shifted focus to horror stories, "Knock Three-One-Two" begins with the common set up of a down on his luck lowlife who is sweating gallons due to his increasing gambling debts that the mob is closing in on him to collect.  Based on the Fredric Brown novel of the same name, Joe Maross portrays such an unlikable protagonist who hits up several different people for the money that he so desperately needs, all to no avail.  Minor scream queen Beverly Garland and noted character actor Warren Oates are two of these people, the latter turning in a showy performance as a simpleton who readily confesses to a string of silk stocking murders that he did not commit.  It takes a few unexpected turns as well, weaving the subplots together into a tense enough finale.

 

MAN IN THE MIDDLE
(1960)
Dir - Fletcher Markle
Overall: MEH

 

The last Thriller episode that initial producer Fletcher Markle worked on, (also directing here), "Man in the Middle" is another adaptation of a Charlotte Armstrong novel and adheres to the trope of an average schlub simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Mort Sahl plays such a schlub with a perpetual, "Oh jeez, why me?" panache, a television writer that just so happens to sit behind two criminals in a public place who loudly lay out their entire plan to kidnap a socialite for some random money.  Sahl is immediately caught minding his own business, which complicates everyone's day to say the least, setting a plot in motion where people are annoyed and frustrated throughout.  Thankfully it does not have the same egregious effect on the viewer, as Markle manages to stage a few suspenseful moments throughout, even if it is still a humdrum affair in the end.

 

THE CHEATERS
(1960)
Dir - John Brahm
Overall: GOOD
 
The same year that his novel Psycho hit the big screen, author Robert Boch got his first of ten stories adapted for the Thriller program.  "The Cheaters" was also one of the first episodes of the show to feature a definite supernatural element, this one revolving around a pair of mysterious glasses that were designed by amateur alchemist Henry Daniell, glasses which reveal the true feelings and intentions of those whom the wearer gazes upon.  Plot wise, it simply follows one owner of the spectacles after the other in a linear fashion, all of them meeting their doom yet all in unique ways from each other.  This keeps the story interesting despite its one-note trajectory, and the final moment where Harry Townes is bested by his own curiosity contains as one of the most startling images in small screen horror from the era.

Thriller Season One - Part Two

THE GUILTY MEN
(1960)
Dir - Jules Bricken
Overall: MEH

 

Perhaps the story that least belongs yet perfectly fit the early crime-centered trajectory of a program called Thriller, "The Guilty Men" is nothing more than a gangster tragedy with some respectable thespians on board.  Everett Sloan, Frank Silvera, and John Marley play three men who are now successful in their fields, but all came from a rough background that has integrated two of them into the realm of organized crime.  A power grab goes down when Silvera's mob boss tries to go fully legitimate to not only clear his conscious and beat the coming FBI crackdown, but most importantly to finally win the good graces of his estranged brother Marley who is the one member of the old crew to avoid illegal activity entirely as a grown man.  There is nothing remarkable here from a narrative perspective, but the cast give it their all and the moral compass of the material is on point.

 

THE PURPLE ROOM
(1960)
Dir - Douglas Heyes
Overall: GOOD
 
It took seven episodes for NBC's Thriller to deliver anything in the horror camp, be it in a cliche ridden fashion.  "The Purple Room" features the well-trotted gag of someone inheriting and having to spend the night in a haunted house in order to reap the potential financial benefits of the place, and Rip Torn plays this someone with the standard skeptical gusto of a young man who is determined to make that money no matter how many bumps in the night he as to endure.  Alan Napier also shows up, plus the house in question is the one from the same year's Psycho, at least on the exterior.  Motifs are here that had and would continue to be mined within the genre, but writer/director Douglas Heyes loads the presentation with creepy atmosphere, staging some wonderful scenes in the process and delivering something that is less tongue-in-cheek than William Castle's brand of spookshow high-jinks, by comparison.

 

THE WATCHER
(1960)
Dir - John Brahm
Overall: MEH

 

An adaptation of Dolores Hitchens' 1959 novel of the same name, "The Watcher" pits a self-righteous school teacher against a small resort town that is not used to serial killer tomfoolery.  Martin Gabel's character is equipped with eccentricities, namely being all up in a few people's business and presenting himself as a harmless if nosy man who wants to make sure that his fellow neighbors are all on the moral up and up.  This of course is a ruse in order for him to select the most "deserving" victims, which in typical deranged male killer mold are mostly helpless women, though a young Richard Chamberlain feels the brunt of Gabel's wrath as well during one particularly grisly scene.  Most of the story revolves around Chamberlain and Olive Sturgess secretive romance though, the drama of which comes off as dated and uninteresting.

 

GIRL WITH A SECRET
(1960)
Dir - Mitchell Leisen
Overall: MEH

 

Another Charlotte Armstrong novel gets the Thriller treatment in "Girl with a Secret", said girl in question discovering that her new husband is an undercover agent who has some shady fellows close on his trail that are prone to selling government secrets to the highest bidder.  A small detail emerges that forces Myrna Fahey to have such a secret, and things unravel quickly from there with suspicious enquirers being made, the bad guys getting the upper hand, and some blind luck saving the day.  Charles Beaumont's teleplay has enough forward momentum, Rex Holman makes for a creepy henchman that likes to grin menacingly, and Cloris Leachman even shows up in a small part.  Still, this is another filler episode until the program got to its more memorable ones; adequately done, yet lacking in pizazz or enough differentiating qualities to make it stand out amongst any other non-Western or comedy TV from the day.

 

THE PREDICTION
(1960)
Dir - John Brahm
Overall: MEH

 

The first of five Thriller episodes to feature Boris Karloff in a lead role besides that of the host, "The Prediction" answers  the question of what would happen to a phony psychic if they all of a sudden were granted legit premonition powers.  Karloff of course is excellent, portraying a doomed man without any villainous tendencies besides his smoke and mirror act that he performs with his daughter Audrey Dalton.  Donald S. Sanford's plot gets overwrought after awhile as Karloff continues to have visions of more and more deaths, with subplots involving romance, gambling, and scandals thrown in.  Some of it ties together cleverly, some predictably, but it is mostly just a treat for Karloff fans to see the seventy-three year-old actor still giving it his all.

Thriller Season One - Part One

THE TWISTED IMAGE

(1960)

Dir - Arthur Hiller

Overall: MEH

 

Fitting for the title which initially focused more on melodramatic thriller material as opposed to supernatural horror, NBC's Thriller kicks off with the William O'Farrell adaptation "The Twisted Image".  Small screen heavyweight Leslie Nielsen plays an upper class business man who gets targeted by two mentally unstable peons who work for the same company as he does, though both of these unfortunate individuals have their own singular agenda against Nielsen and do not meet until the final, tragic act.  While Nielsen is his usual level-headed straight man and Natalie Trundy gets the less sympathetic role as the bright-eyed woman who becomes cluelessly and dangerously infatuated with him, George Grizzard steals the show as a disturbed and traumatized young man who perpetually lies, steals, and covets what he seems unable to earn on his own, laying on a type of villainous charm that is simultaneously pathetic

 

CHILD'S PLAY

(1960)

Dir - Arthur Hiller

Overall: MEH

 

It is often difficult in fiction to have a child protagonist that is up to no good and make them not annoying.  "Child's Play" opens with youngster Tom Nolan pointing a loaded riffle at a confused stranger out by a pond, insisting that the man is Black Bart and that he needs to think good and hard about what he is going to do with him.  Interestingly though, the proceeding story does not merely sink into some kind of Dennis the Menace/The Bad Seed hybrid and instead respectfully explores how an outward dysfunctional marriage can have severe effects on the children who are stuck being raised in such an environment.  Most of the episode involves Frank Overton and Bethel Leslie engaged in detailed and nuanced conversation about how their marriage went wrong and what if anything can be done about it, all the while we continue to cut back to Nolan during his mentally unstable hold-up.  Director Arthur Hill pulls off an intense finale, but as sincere as the material is presented, it still leans on simple-minded melodrama as television programs from the era often did.

WORSE THAN MURDER

(1960)

Dir - Mitchell Leisen

Overall: MEH

 

Based off of an Evelyn Berckman story, "Worse Than Murder" is one of the more forgettable early Thriller installments, despite it being well-performed and adequately scripted by Mel Goldberg.  It has more to do with noir than any other genre, focusing on a bitter woman who feels gypped out of a family inheritance that should have went to her dead husband, meaning her.  Constance Ford is well-cast in such a thankless role, being a determined villainess who smirks her way through a calculated blackmail attempt that of course goes awry in the end, mostly due to her own arrogance and unlikeability which both her enemies and fate manage to bypass.  There are some nuances to the plotting and the loose ends are tidied up, but it never gains enough momentum with its multitude of characters and a premise that is more serviceable instead of intriguing.

THE MARK OF THE HAND

(1960)

Dir - Paul Henreid

Overall: MEH

 

A whodunit where the person left holding the smoking gun refuses to utter a word, "The Mark of the Hand" has a sufficient crime premise to work with, even if the melodramatic details do not deliver much on the "thriller" promise of the show's title.  Based on the novel of the same name by Charlotte Armstrong, (a novel that in fact did not come out until three years later), Terry Burnham is the pistol-toting child in question who is shown holding the murder weapon as her family stands around looking aghast.  What follows are several false explanations of what happened, none of which satisfy Judson Pratt's police inspector who shows up Agatha Christie style to interview and lead-on all of the suspects until he gets his woman or man.  Naturally, the finger points to several possible culprits until the list is narrowed down and also naturally, it involves a poorly though-out scheme to get some hands on some dead relative money.  One of the more pulpy and sensationalized episodes of the program, it suffices as means of killing some couch potato time.

 

ROSE'S LAST SUMMER

(1960)

Dir - Arthur Hiller

Overall: MEH

 

A more convoluted variation on Billy Wilder's seminal Sunset Boulevard, "Rose's Last Summer" ends up having a midway plot reveal that borders on implausible nonsense, but viewers may nevertheless be bamboozled as was intended.  Like Gloria Swanson who was a silent era star, Mary Astor also began her career in the pre-talkie days, and she makes for an ideal member of Hollywood's now washed-up former elite who has fallen on hard times here.  Astor's title character is a lush with three ex husbands on her resume who has not worked in her craft in years, prompting her to take a mysterious caretaker job when offered.  An adaptation of Margaret Millar's 1952 novel of the same name, it has some unintended camp appeal despite Astor's mostly straight performance, but once the rug-pull occurs, the story merely lumbers towards its humdrum conclusion.