The Twilight Zone - The After Hours

Of the many and varied horror, science fiction and mystery anthology series that were such a feature of American television in the late 50s and early 60s The Twilight Zone is probably the one with the most glowing reputation. I have always had slightly mixed feelings about this series. There are many episodes that I love unreservedly and at its best it had a unique atmosphere that was profoundly unsettling rather than overtly scary.

On the other hand it could at times be a bit sentimental, and rather preachy. It’s the episodes written by Rod Serling with which I mostly have issues. Serling was definitely prone to sentimentalism and he could be very preachy. At his worst the preachiness could be clumsy. He did write some great episodes, but he wrote quite a few that I find difficult to enjoy.

Having said all that, my all-time favourite episode was in fact written by Rod Serling - The After Hours.

This is episode 34 of the first season of The Twilight Zone. It originally went to air on June 10, 1960. It was directed by Douglas Heyes (arguably The Twilight Zone’s ace director).

It’s a tricky episode to discuss, because I really don’t want to spoil any of the twists.

It starts innocently enough. Marsha White (Anne Francis) has gone to a department store to buy a gift for her mother. She’s looking for a gold thimble. She is advised to go to the ninth floor. Which she does. That’s something that will later be disturbing and perplexing for both Marsha and the store staff.

She finds the thimble but later finds, to her intense disappointment, that it is damaged. Naturally she complains and for some reason which she cannot fathom this causes great consternation to the staff. Then she has a shock. She is advised to lie down and rest. She has a sleep and when she wakes up things start to get really strange.

Marsha finds herself in a very frightening situation and it’s the kind of situation which would lend itself to a horror plot. But there’s no actual horror here. No gore. No bloodshed. No violence. No monsters. Nothing except a gradually increasing atmosphere of strangeness and disorientation. To the extent that it is horror, it is very subtle existential horror.

This is more akin to the literary genre of weird fiction than to horror. The temptation would have been there to give the story a horror story ending but Serling cleverly resists this temptation. This is The Twilight Zone and Serling here achieves exactly the feel that he had in mind when he created the series.

One of the great strengths of this episode is that this time Serling has no real axe to grind. He’s simply trying to make us feel uneasy. And he succeeds admirably.

Douglas Heyes as usual does a fine job as director. The visuals are impressive and a bit creepy. There aren’t any special effects as such. Everything is achieved through fine directing and good production design. 

And some very special props.

Anne Francis is excellent, playing Marsha as a woman who is bewildered and disoriented rather than hysterical. The supporting cast is very good, but this episode belongs to Anne Francis. There are some lovely nuances to her performance. You don’t fully appreciate just how good her acting is until you get to the end of the story, and then you realise what her performance has been leading up to. And according to director Douglas Heyes most of the really clever touches were her own ideas. Anne Francis was a very fine actress but I don’t think she was ever better than this.

The After Hours is a great example of what is now a lost art - short-form television drama. The half-hour television episode or standalone television drama was a very distinctive form and while it has its weaknesses it had very considerable strengths as well. It required discipline, focus and economy. Information that the viewer required (information about what sort of people the characters are, what kind of place it is that forms the setting of the story) had to be conveyed with extreme economy. 

Which meant that the sets, the set dressing, the lighting, the costumes and the makeup had to be carefully thought out because most of that vital information was going to be conveyed through an immediate visual impression. There just wasn’t time for detailed explanations. 

And the actors and actresses had to give the viewer an instantaneous impression of the characters they played, with no time for them to tell their life stories.

In The After Hours Serling and Douglas Heyes give us a master-class in this lost art. There’s not a single wasted shot, or a single unnecessary line of dialogue.

The After Hours is beautifully shot, and by 1960 television standards it’s visually very very impressive.

I’ve seen The After Hours at least three times now and I think I like it even more with each viewing. Very highly recommended.

I've also reviewed some other Twilight Zone episodes here and also here.

Thriller - three 1973 epidodes

A look at three episodes from Brian Clemens’ horror anthology series Thriller, one of the finest series of its type ever made. All three episodes originally aired in 1973.

The Colour of Blood

The Colour of Blood is the fifth episode of the first season of Thriller. Brian Clemens wrote the script, Robert Tronson directed.

The Carnation Killer, a crazed sex murderer who has killed at least nine women, has been caught. He has been found guilty but insane and he is now on his way to a hospital for the criminally insane. Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief.

Unfortunately Arthur Page (for that is the Carnation Killer’s real name) never reaches the hospital. The prison van crashes and Page escapes.

Page hopes to lose himself in the crowds at Waterloo Station. But first he must have a red carnation for his button hole. He simply doesn’t feel dressed without it.

He is rather surprised when a young blonde woman carrying an attache case suddenly latches onto him. As luck (in this case bad luck) would have it Julie Marsh is waiting to meet a man she has never set eyes on.

A man named Graham has inherited a large sum of money and a house in the country. Julie’s job is to meet Graham at Waterloo Station, hand over the money and then take him by train to Westerling (the house he has inherited). Julie will recognise Graham by the red carnation in his button-hole.

It’s just very bad luck for Julie that the first man she sees with a red carnation is not Mr Graham, it’s Arthur Page the insane sex murderer. Page might be insane but he can also be very charming and appear very normal, and Julie has no idea that she’s chosen the wrong man and that she’s about to take him out into the country to a very isolated house where she’s going to be quite alone with him.

But there are some major plot twists that are about to kick in and take the story in a rather different direction. There are nasty surprises in store for just about everyone.

Norman Eshley’s chilling performance as Page is what stands out most in this episode. It’s a neat little script, which relies a little on coincidence but the coincidences are entirely plausible. There’s some effective suspense and some creepy moments. All in all an excellent episode.

Murder in Mind

Murder in Mind was scripted by Terence Feely from a story by Brian Clemens. It was directed by Alan Gibson and was broadcast in May 1973.

It starts with a murder that isn’t.

Tom Patterson (Donald Gee) has held the very humble rank of Detective-Constable for all of a week. Like any keen young copper he dreams of solving a major case. And then a major case seems to drop into his lap. A woman wanders into the police station in the middle of the night and confesses to a murder. Since he’s the only detective on duty it’s Tom Patterson’s case.

But it ends disappointingly. Betty Drew (Zena Walker) had had a blow on the head and her confession was all nonsense.

There’s something about the case that keeps niggling at Tom Patterson. He’s not sure what it is but he feels that there’s some connection he should have made but he didn’t and nobody else did either. There wasn’t any murder and it was all Betty Drew’s imagination and it would be better for Tom to forget all about it. But Tom still feels that there is a puzzle here somewhere.

Brian Clemens has come up with a very intricate script this time. There’s a perfectly straightforward explanation for what has happened, the straightforward explanation being that Betty was concussed and confused and imagined a murder that never happened. Everybody accepts the straightforward explanation, apart from Tom. And of course the viewer is likely to agree with Tom - that there is an alternative explanation. But it requires the pieces of the jigsaw to be pieced together in a different way. The alternative explanation is convoluted but it’s clever and it’s plausible.

But if Tom is right then there might be a murder after all.

The acting is solid but for me the highlight is Ronald Radd’s performance as Superintendent Terson. Good episode.

A Place to Die

A Place to Die was scripted by Terence Feely from a story by Brian Clemens. It was directed by Peter Jefferies and went to air in May 1973.


It’s a basic story that has been done countless times and i’s an idea that was very popular at the time - a remote community that seems perfectly normal but in fact follows either paganism or satanism. To be fair, in 1973 the idea was still reasonably fresh.

It’s also another story of innocent city folk who foolishly move to a rural area only to find themselves in a nightmare world of primitive superstition and terror.

Dr Bruce Nelson (Bryan Marshall) has just taken over a practice in a small village. He and his American wife Tessa (Alexandra Hay) are looking forward to getting away from the stresses of city life.

The first sign that something odd is going on comes when they meet their seriously weird housekeeper Beth. Beth reacts with wonder when she sees Tessa. She excitedly informs the other villagers that Tessa is moon-pale and moon-gold and limps with her left leg. The villagers know what that means. Tessa is the Expected One. And it’s almost Lady Day, and this year Lady Day coincides with a full moon. The signs are clear.

What is going on is obvious to the viewer very early on, we know what Bruce and Tessa have wandered into, but they have no idea. That of course sets up the suspense very nicely. The viewer doesn’t know how Bruce and Tessa are going to get out of a terrifying situation. Another fine episode.

Final Thoughts

Three more very solid Thriller episodes. All worth watching.

Nigel Kneale's Beasts (1976)

Beasts is a six-part 1976 British horror anthology TV series made by ATV and created and written by Nigel Kneale. Kneale is best known for his 1950s Quatermass sci-fi/horror TV serials which were later adapted to film by Hammer, with great success although Kneale wasn’t happy with the Hammer versions. Kneale later wrote some very strange, disturbing but fascinating TV plays such as The Year of the Sex Olympics and The Stone Tape (both of which I highly recommend).

Kneale had a knack for mixing horror with science fiction in a genuinely original and surprising manner.

Beasts is typical of Kneale's work in that you’re never quite sure if there’s a supernatural element of if the stories are science fiction. Or they might possibly be merely the products of overheated imaginations.

The episodes

Baby is an exercise in folk horror. Peter Gilkes (Simon MacCorkindale) and his wife Jo (Jane Wymark) have just moved to the country. Peter was tired of being a city vet. He wanted to be a real country vet. Jo is a country girl but oddly she seems less happy about the movie. Maybe she’ll feel better when their very rundown cottage is fixed up a bit. Jo is pregnant and she’s anxious since she had a miscarriage a year earlier. Jo’s anxiety will play an important part in the story.

While tearing down a wall Peter and Jo find a huge earthenware jar. It contains a mummified - something. Peter is a vet but he has no idea what it is, although he finds it fascinating. Jo is totally creeped out by it.

Jo hears all sorts of tales, some of which may be true and some of which may be folklore. The tales concern the piece of land on which the cottage stands, and the reason nobody farms this land. She also discovers an interesting fact about the previous tenants. They had no children. This seems significant to Jo.

Jo hears strange noises and sees a few things that disturb her. Her anxiety grows. Nobody takes her fears seriously. The viewer will also wonder just how seriously to take her fears. Most of the things she sees and hears could be described as ambiguous. To find out whether Jo’s fears really are justified you’ll have to watch the episode. Good episode.

Buddyboy is wildly original and quirky. Dave (Martin Shaw) is thinking of buying a broken-down dolphinarium. Not for the dolphins. The dolphins are long gone. Dave wants to turn the place into a cinema to show adult films. That’s the business Dave is in. He already owns an adult cinema. Converting this place into a cinema will be easy because a cinema is what it originally was, before it was turned into a dolphinarium.

The guy selling the place, Hubbard (Wolfe Morris), seems extraordinarily jumpy and anxious to sell. He keeps talking about all the trouble he had with Buddyboy, his star dolphin. Buddyboy was a great performer but difficult to handle.

There’s a strange girl, Lucy (Pamela Moiseiwitsch) who is always hanging around the dolphinarium. She’s obsessed with Buddyboy as well. She thought he was the most wonderful animal that ever lived.

Dave is strangely drawn to the odd waif-like Lucy and they gradually become involved. Then there’s the ending (and I have no intention of revealing any spoilers here) which exasperates a lot of people. They feel cheated because there is no obvious supernatural element and they resort to prosaic interpretations which I feel are probably wrong.

My feeling is that Kneale really wants us to think about this one. There are plausible and satisfying explanations but you have to tease them out and you have to think about what you’ve seen and you have to think about both Lucy and Buddyboy. It’s not that there’s no strangeness here, but it’s not the obvious strangeness people expect from straightforward horror. This episode made me think long and hard about what it could mean, and I think that actually makes it great television.

The Dummy is another indication of the unconventionality of Kneale’s approach. Clyde Boyd (Bernard Horsfall) is an actor falling apart. His last chance is to play the monster known as the Dummy in yet another low-budget horror flick. The trouble really starts when he spots Peter Wager (Simon Oates) in the studio. Wager is the man who stole Boyd’s wife. Boyd falls apart completely but this shooting has to go ahead and harassed producer 'Bunny' Nettleton (Clive Swift) manages to convince Boyd to complete the scene. The result is mayhem, the police have to be called, there’s a dead man lying on the studio floor and Wager is running around with a shotgun threatening to shoot Boyd.

The clue to what has happened is provided by journalist Joan Eastgate (Lillias Walker) who is on set hoping to interview Boyd. She talks about tribesmen who wear masks in religious ceremonies and how it’s the mask that ends up wearing the man rather than the other way around. That’s more or less what happens here. Boyd’s whole personality disintegrates and he becomes the monster, the Dummy. It’s not just his money problems and his wife leaving him, he also has to face the failure of his career as an actor. The only successful roles he’s ever had having been playing the Dummy, playing the entire part encased in a rubber suit. The Dummy is more real than he is.

It’s great to see Clive Swift in a complex ambiguous part and doing it extremely well. Thorley Walters adds fun as the pompous but rather ridiculous Shakepearian actor turning up for a day’s work and a pay cheque.

This is a serious and tragic story. Don’t be misled by the silliness of the monster costume. That was probably a swipe by Nigel Kneale at Doctor Who, a TV series he despised.

Special Offer is a horror story set in a small supermarket. Noreen (Pauline Quirke) is a socially awkward clumsy teenager who seems to make a mess of everything she does, whether it’s packing shelves or working the checkouts. Accidents seem to happen around her. The story manager, the slimy Mr Grimley (Geoffrey Bateman), is exasperated with her. Even worse, Noreen has a crush on him, while Grimley is pursuing the other checkout operator, glamorous dolly bird Linda. Noreen claims it’s an animal causing all the trouble. A small furry animal that looks quite a bit like the company’s cartoon mascot, Briteway Billy.

Nobody believes her but then things start happening that can’t be blamed on her, and the other staff members can hear a small animal scuttling about in the store. Mr Grimley is out of his depth and calls on the grocery chain’s personnel manager, Mr Liversedge (Wensley Pithey), for help. Mr Liversedge thinks they’re dealing with something akin to a poltergeist although in this case it’s more a paranormal than a supernatural phenomenon. He thinks Noreen is unconsciously making these things happen.

This episode starts out rather whimsically although with an edge of pathos. Very gradually the mood shifts to become more menacing. The terror when it comes is still mixed with whimsy which gives the story an interesting flavour. I like the idea of a small supermarket as a setting for horror, with tins of baked beans and boxes of cereal used as engines of destruction. And of course Mr Liversedge’s theory is that the terror’s starting point is Noreen’s hopeless love for Mr Grimley. 17-year-old Pauline Quirke’s performance is extraordinarily good, subtle but emotionally powerful. Quite a good episode.

What Big Eyes begins with a young over-keen RSPCA inspector becoming convinced that an animal trader is up to something shady. He finds it hard to believe that three timber wolves would really have ended up in a tiny pet shop. He discovers that the pet shop’s owner, an elderly eccentric would-be scientist named Leo Raymount (Patrick Magee), really did obtain those wolves. But why? The answer has to do with Raymount’s bizarre theories about lycanthropy. Weird but oddly moving episode.

In During Barty's Party a middle-aged woman is worried that there may be a rat in the cellar. Possibly two rats. Her husband isn’t too worried at first - his wife is rather nervous. Then it becomes obvious that there are more than two rats. A lot more. His wife is even more worried. She thinks these rats are not just ordinary rats. She thinks they have evolved much greater intelligence.

This is a standard “what if nature turned against us” story, although it’s well executed. This is the least weird episode and for that reason I find it the least interesting.

Final Thoughts

Beasts is Kneale pushing the boundaries of the genre and giving us monster stories that defy all our expectations about monster stories. A strange offbeat unsettling series. Highly recommended.

Beasts is available on DVD from Network.

Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense

Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense was Hammer Films’ last desperate effort to save itself. Their final feature film was To the Devil…a Daughter in 1976. Due to unfortunate financial decisions, failed to make them any money. The British film industry was on its last legs and things were about to get worse, with home video about to arrive and drive the final nail in the coffin. Hammer’s decision to move away from movies into television was actually quite sound.

It’s a decision which should have worked. Hammer House of Horror, made in 1980, was well received and the ratings were healthy. The American network was initially keen on the idea of a second season. Sadly the deal fell through. Without the US network onboard the series was doomed.

Hammer House of Horror did demonstrate that Hammer could do TV horror extremely well. And by the late 70s it was becoming obvious that TV was more suited to Hammer’s style of horror. At the beginning of the 70s Hammer had realised that they needed to vary their formula, and that they needed to add more blood and more sex and more nudity. Their late 1960s efforts were starting to seem a bit tame and a bit stodgy. Hammer responded by making a series of extremely interesting early 70s horror films, with the extra blood, sex and nudity. But Hammer never seemed entirely comfortable with the idea of erotic horror. It just isn’t British. They preferred to leave that sort of thing to the Europeans who were very comfortable indeed with the concept. On TV however they could make the kind of horror that they were comfortable with, a bit bloody but not too much so and with just enough sexiness.

With Hammer House of Horror they hadn’t extricated themselves from their financial mess but the results of the series were still moderately encouraging. In 1984 they tried again, with Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense.

This new series was a co-production with Fox’s TV arm in the US. That caused problems from the start. Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense was too rushed, and to please their American partners the series had to be squeaky clean, bland and inoffensive. If Hammer were uneasy about sex they were to find that American TV preferred to pretend that sex just didn’t exist.

The episodes have a 70-minute running time, presumably at the insistence of the American partners who intended the series to be screened as a mystery movie series. The running times are definitely too long in some cases. Some of the episodes are a bit slower than they should have been, with not quite enough plot to justify the movie-length running times. But it's only a problem with some episodes.

The Americans presumably also insisted on imported American stars. 

Episode Guide

The Sweet Scent of Death was directed by Peter Sasdy. It was written by Brian Clemens so it’s no surprise that it plays out exactly like an episode from his 1970s anthology series Thriller. If you’re a Thriller fan you’ll know what to expect. The plot twists are done reasonably well but some key aspects of the story are a bit too predictable.

Dean Stockwell (an actor I have never been able to warm to) plays an American diplomat in England. Shirley Knight plays his wife Ann. Someone seems to be out to get Ann, although it’s not clear just how serious the threat might be. The prologue suggests to us that there’s a connection to events in New York ten years earlier.

There’s an obvious suspect on whom the police focus their attention but the viewer will immediately realise that there are three or possibly even four alternative suspects.

Peter Sasdy directs the episode competently. It’s an OK episode but just a bit on the bland side.

A Distant Scream, written by Martin Worth and directed by John Hough, is more interesting. An elderly man is dying. He spent the lest few decades of his life locked up for the murder of his girlfriend years earlier. He has always proclaimed his innocence and has been obsessed with finding the real killer. Close to death, he is transported back in time (presumably by supernatural or paranormal means) and is able to witness the two days leading up to his girlfriend’s murder.

The old man is Michael (David Carradine). At the time of the murder Michael was a freelance photographer spending a holiday at a fishing village with his girlfriend Rosemary (Stephanie Beacham). She’s a married woman with whom he is having an affair.

Michael as an old man is not only able to witness the events leading up to the tragedy, he can interact with the people involved. Rosemary can see him. He can talk to her. At times others can see him and speak with him. Even his younger self sees him at one point.

This of course involves one of those famous time travel paradoxes. If he can interact with people in the past then he should logically be able to change the past. I was rather interested to see whether the scriptwriter (Martin Worth) was aware of the time travel paradox and if so how he was going to deal with it. Or whether he was simply going to ignore it.

The weak link in this episode is David Carradine. He just can’t act. There’s another problem - as a dying old man he looks younger healthier than he does as his younger self. Stephanie Beacham’s performance on the other hand is quite solid.

The Late Nancy Irving, written by David Fisher and directed by Peter Sasdy, concerns a lady golf champion. She has diabetes but it’s always been well controlled. She also has an incredibly rare blood type.

Then she wakes up in hospital. She is told that she crashed her car. She has only vague garbled memories of some kind of car accident. She is assured that her injuries are not all that severe. What worries her is that she feels rather confused. Her mind seems foggy. She is a bit disturbed by the bars on the windows of her private room but she is given a reasonably plausible explanation. The bars date from a time when the clinic treated mental patients who might try to throw themselves from windows. Of course she isn’t being locked in and she’s silly to think such a thing.

Gradually she becomes a little worried. Why hasn’t she heard from her fiancé? Why hasn’t she heard from anyone? Why does she feel so weak? And why are they giving her blood transfusions? And then she sees a story on the TV news and she starts to get the picture.

The main problem here is that while the basic idea is excellent there are not enough plot twists to sustain a 70-minute running time. The excessive length weakens the suspense. Cristina Raines in the lead rôle is also just a little bland. This is an OK episode that could have been a great episode.

Black Carrion was written by Don Houghton and directed by John Hough. Journalist Paul Taylor (Leigh Lawson) is hired to write an article about the Verne Brothers. They were (according to the story) a hugely successful pop duo who disappeared in 1963. Totally disappeared. No-one knows what happened to them. They were never heard from again. To Taylor it’s obvious that this is a promising story. Researcher/photographer Cora Berlaine (Season Hubley) has been assigned to assist him. Cora has a prodigious knowledge of 60s pop music.

Cora is troubled by memories. Disturbing but totally disjointed memories. Are they real memories? She thinks so but of course she can’t be sure.

The search for the Verne Brothers takes Paul and Cora to the village of Briar’s Frome. It was rumoured that the Verne Brothers were going to buy the palatial manor house there. The village is deserted. It’s a ghost town. But weird things are happening in Briar’s Frome, and Cora’s memories are getting more vivid.

The plot is all over the place and there’s some silliness but there are lots of great ideas (and even original ideas) in this episode. And lots of creepy atmosphere. I enjoyed this episode a great deal.

In Possession was written by Michael J. Bird and directed by Val Guest. Frank Daly (Christopher Cazenove) and his wife Sylvia (Carol Lynley) reach their hotel room only to find that it’s already occupied by a woman and an old lady. When they fetch the manager to sort things out the woman and the lady have vanished. Then Frank sees them again by the river, and again they vanish.

Frank and Sylvia start seeing various people in their flat. People who are not there. But they seem very real. Slowly it becomes obvious that in some way Frank and Sylvia are witnessing events that lead to a murder. Is this a shared dream? Or is it something that happened in the past?

Whether you consider this episode to be a haunted house story depends on how broadly you define that term. Whether this counts as a haunted house story doesn’t really matter. It’s a fascinatingly weird and disturbing tale with some real moments of terror and creepiness. An excellent episode.

And the Wall Came Tumbling Down was written by Dennis Spooner and John Peacock and directed by Paul Annett. An old deconsecrated church is being demolished by the Ministry of Defence. There’s a mysterious accident on the site, and we then get a flashback to events in 1949, events involving a coven of devil-worshippers. The devil-worshippers are betrayed by a young man. More than three centuries later another young man has a peculiar interest in this old church.

As you may have guessed the world of the 1980s is about to encounter evil from the 17th century. Maybe not wildly original but it plays out in a very satisfactory manner with plenty of gothic atmosphere and some real creepiness. Caroline Trent (Barbi Benton) works for the government but her real interest is in the occult. She isn’t sure what is going on with that old church but she knows that Dark Forces are at work. The site manager Peter Whiteway (Gareth Hunt) doesn’t believe her, at least not at first.

This one has an interesting cast. There’s Gareth Hunt (best-known for The New Avengers), the wonderful Peter Wyngarde from Department S and Jason King and there’s Barbi Benton, best known as a Playboy model. Hunt is very good, Wyngarde is sinister and charismatic and Barbi Benton is quite OK. It all builds to a satisfying conclusion. A very good episode.

Child's Play was written by Graham Wassell and directed by Val Guest. Mike and Ann Preston are a young couple with a daughter. They wake up in the middle of the night to discover something very odd and disturbing. They have been walled in. Their whole house has been walled in. And it’s getting rather hot. The telephone doesn’t work. The radio doesn’t work. The TV works, but every station has nothing but a station identification logo and it’s the same logo on every channel.

They haven’t noticed it yet but that logo has appeared on all sorts of items in the house. It’s getting hotter and they’re close to giving way to panic.

Mike comes up with various plans to break through the wall but it seems impossible. The two of them also come up with possible explanations. The actual explanation is one they hadn’t considered, and it’s pretty clever. There are some clues but I certainly didn’t guess the solution. This is a nicely scary creepy story, a bit like a good Twilight Zone episode. A very fine episode.

Paint Me a Murder was written by Jesse Lasky Jr and Pat Silver and directed by Alan Cooke. Painter Luke Lorenz finishes a painting then gets into a rowing boat and heads out to sea. He then smashes through the planking of the boat. His body is not found. Suicide is assumed.

He wasn’t a very successful painter when alive but now that he’s dead his paintings start to fetch huge prices. That’s good news for his widow Sandra (Michelle Phillips). And for art dealer Vincent Rhodes (David Robb).

The major early twist won’t come as much of a surprise but the twists do keep coming. I liked this episode.

Tennis Court was written by Andrew Sinclair and Michael Hastings and directed by Cyril Frankel. This is a haunted tennis court story. A middle-aged woman, Maggie (Hannah Gordon), inherits an old but moderately palatial country house. She has recently married Harry Dowd, a Member of Parliament. In the grounds of the house is an indoor tennis court. Slightly odd things happen on that tennis court. It has some connection to events many years earlier, during the war. A British bomber was shot down. One member of the crew survived. They other did not.

The local vicar, John Bray (Peter Graves), knows something about that wartime incident. At the time he was a Canadian volunteer in the R.A.F. and he was there.


Maggie is becoming increasingly terrified of whatever is in that tennis court.

Not one of my favourite episodes, but entertaining enough.

The Corvini Inheritance was written by David Fisher and directed by Gabrielle Beaumont. This one starts with a young woman, Eva Bailey, encountering a peeping tom. She is unharmed but rather scared. And it starts with a robbery at a fine art auction room.

Frank Lane (David McCallum) is in charge of security at the auction room. He also happens to live in the same building as Eva. Frank offers to help make Eva’s flat more secure. They have dinner together. Frank is divorced and a bit lonely but he’s a nice guy.

Frank has a big security job on. The Corvini inheritance, a fabulous collection of jewels amassed in Italy during the Renaissance by a family of professional assassins, is to be auctioned. It will be in the keeping of the auctioneers for several weeks. It’s an obvious target for professional thieves. The most valuable piece in the collection is a necklace with a grim history. It may be cursed.

There are two plot strands here. Someone seems to be stalking Eva, and there’s the possibility of an attempt to steal the Corvini jewels. I liked this one a lot. There’s some nice ambiguity here.

Czech Mate was written by Jeremy Burnham and directed by John Hough. This is a straightforward Cold War spy thriller but it’s nicely executed with plenty of cynicism and paranoia. Susan George plays an Englishwoman, Vicky Duncan, caught up in a web of deceit and betrayal behind the Iron Curtain. In this story there is no difference whatever between the good guys and the bad guys. People disappear and corpses turn up and Vicky discovers that she can’t trust anyone.

Susan George and Patrick Mower (as her ex-husband) give excellent performances and it’s always nice to see Peter Vaughan in anything. This episode is a bit out of place in this series but it’s entertaining.

Last Video and Testament was written by Roy Russell and Robert Quigley and directed by Peter Sasdy. Victor Frankham (David Langton) owns a vast electronic empire. He has a heart condition and he has a much younger wife, Selena (Deborah Raffin). A much younger wife who may be looking elsewhere for certain pleasures which her husband can no longer provide. Victor’s doctor has been encouraging him to have an operation. An operation which will restore his vitality in the bedroom, which may not be to Selena’s liking.

Victor has a surprise in store for Selena, in the form of a videotape.

This one has quite a clever central idea and it works very nicely.

Final Thoughts

This is an extremely good series, much much better than its reputation would lead you to believe. Highly recommended.

The German Pidax DVD boxed set includes all thirteen episodes, in English with removable German subtitles. The box cover suggests that it only includes eleven episodes but it definitely includes all thirteen. The transfers are perfectly acceptable.

Thriller - A Midsummer Nightmare and Death in Deep Water (1976)

The final two episodes of the Brian Clemens-created British Thriller anthology series went to air in May 1976.

Network in the UK released the compete series on DVD and thankfully they’e the original versions, not the later American versions which added excruciatingly bad extra scenes.

A Midsummer Nightmare

This episode starts with a prologue in which a young woman is murdered in the woods. After the opening credits the scene switches to London.

Jody Baxter (Joanna Pettet) is married to a private detective. They’re still in love but they’re separated because she wants to Be Her Own Person. Johnny (her husband) is off to Rome on a case. Jody offers to mind the store while he’s gone but he dismisses the idea out of hand. But Jody decides to play private detective anyway.

She manages to get herself a case and it’s a murder case. A murder that happened five years earlier (the one we saw in the pre-credits sequence). Arnold Tully (Freddie Jones) doesn’t want her to find out who murdered his daughter. He already knows that. He wants her to find the evidence that will convict the killer.

Detective Sergeant George Briggs (Brian Blessed) tells Jody that Tully is right. It was definitely Peter Ingram who murdered Annabella Tully. The police never had any doubts but they didn’t have enough evidence to be sure of getting a conviction. The case was never brought to trial because the police were hoping that eventually the evidence they needed would turn up.

Briggs, who is a jovial sort of fellow, is quite happy for Jody to investigate the case and he’s happy to offer her whatever co-operation she needs. He would very much like to see Peter Ingram behind bars.

What Briggs hasn’t told her is that Ingram wasn’t the only suspect.

It also turns out that Tully was Annabella’s uncle, not her father. He adopted her when her parents were killed.

Jody isn’t a trained detective but she’s married to one so she’s undoubtedly picked up a few pointers from her husband and she is intelligent and most of all she’s sceptical. She also knows her Shakespeare and she thinks that that might be useful in this case, with both the victim and most of the suspects being theatrical types. And she’d like to know why Annabella’s copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream wasn’t found near her body.

She’s also in considerable danger. It’s a small town. Everybody knows everything that is going on, so the killer obviously knows there’s a private detective snooping around.

Jody is supposed to an American (this was an ITC series so there had to be an American in the cast). Joanna Pettet was English but raised in Canada so playing an American was no problem. Pettet’s career never really took off which is a pity. She was a decent actress and she does a fine job here.

Seeing Brian Blessed on screen is of course always a treat. Freddie Jones was wonderful at playing oddball characters and he’s excellent as Tully, still grieving for Annabella after five years.

For this instalment of Thriller Brian Clemens tuned out a very solid script with a good well-constructed mystery. The audience doesn’t know the identity of the killer and Clemens makes sure we’re kept in a state of uncertainty. There are two obvious suspects and there are other not-so-obvious but definitely possible suspects. There’s good suspense. We know Jody is playing a very dangerous game and she also doesn’t know who the killer is (she’s too sceptical to just automatically assume that it must be Ingram). We’re worried for her right from the start and we get more worried as the story progresses).

I was pretty sure I knew who the killer was, but I was wrong.

The consensus view is that Thriller was running out of steam by this point but I think A Midsummer Nightmare is actually pretty good.

Death in Deep Water

Death in Deep Water was the final episode of Thriller. Gary Stevens (Bradford Dillman) is on the run. He was going to testify against organised crime but changed his mind and decided to get out the United States. Now he’s living in a cottage in a little fishing village in England. He’s bored and going a bit stir-crazy but at least he’s pretty confident he’s safe.

He isn’t bored any more after the blonde in the bikini shows up. She was going for a swim in the middle of a storm and she ended up at his cottage. She figures out who he is pretty quickly. The newspapers say he was a hitman. Since she knows so much he’s going to have to trust her. And he does trust her. He doesn’t know her name so he just calls her Blondie.

She’s married to a much older man. A very rich older man. Blondie likes money.

Of course Gary and Blondie begin an affair. And of course they fall in love. Blondie is not the sort of girl who is likely to just walk away from a rich husband. And now the rich husband is taking her away, to Nice. Permanently. Which means the end of the nice little affair with Gary. But there’s nothing to be done about it. As long as her husband is alive she won’t leave him. Of course if her husband was no longer alive she’d be very rich and could do whatever she wanted to.

While Gary and Blondie try to solve this conundrum another hitman has arrived in the village. Burton (Philip Stone) is there to kill Gary Stevens.

Suzan Farmer is very good as Blondie. Ian Bannen is also very good as Gary’s fisherman buddy Doonan. The problem is Bradford Dillman. He gives a rather lifeless performance, suggesting that he just wanted the pay cheque.

Philip Stone was an odd choice to play a hitman. He was a very competent actor and could play sinister rôles but he might have been more at home playing the sort of man who orders others to do his killing for him. The oddness of the casting does work in its own way. And I guess a hitman who looks more like a bank manager or a village pharmacist would be a pretty effective hitman. His American accent is however atrocious.

The script (as usual it was written by Brian Clemens) combines several ideas that aren’t exactly dazzlingly original but Clemens gives them some new touches and throws in some wonderful twists at the end.

Thanks to those twists Death in Deep Water is a pretty high note for the series to go out on.

Final Thoughts

The last season of Thriller is better than many people would have you believe and both A Midsummer Nightmare and Death in Deep Water are highly recommended.

13 Demon Street (1959)

13 Demon Street was a horror anthology series created by Curt Siodmak. It was made in Sweden in 1959 but was shot in English with mostly American casts. Thirteen episodes were made. It was aired in syndication in the United States.

Curt Siodmak (brother of film director Robert Siodmak) had a varied and interesting career as a novelist, screenwriter and occasional director, mostly in the science fiction and horror genres.

Lon Chaney Jr provides an introduction to each episode, in the guise of a man who has been cursed for all eternity for some terrible crime. He can only escape the curse if he can find some crime more heinous than his own, so he is telling us these stories in the hope of convincing us that there really are worse crimes than his own (although he doesn’t tell us what his crime was).

Three episodes were later edited together to make a movie called The Devil’s Messenger, and since all three episodes were quite good the movie ended up as a reasonably good anthology movie.

One of the recurring themes in this series seems to be the fuzziness of the boundary between reality and illusion, and between sanity and madness. Strange things happen, but are they really happening? These are ideas that are explored fairly effectively in several episodes.

It’s also a series that captures an atmosphere of subtle weirdness quite well.

A few other episodes are available from various sources. Something Weird Video’s DVD release of another interesting anthology series of that era, The Veil, includes two episodes of 13 Demon Street as extras. The horror in 13 Demon Street is perhaps slightly more overt but like The Veil it suffers at times from not providing totally satisfying payoffs. It’s less original than The Veil but overall it’s slightly more effective.

The Vine of Death

The Vine of Death was directed by Curt Siodmak who also co-wrote the script with Leo Guild. An archaeologist in Copenhagen plants some 4,000-year-old bulbs, from an extinct vine known as the Mirada Death Vine. Legend has it that the vine has an affinity for dead human bodies. The bulbs appear to be hopelessly desiccated but the archaeologist, Dr Frank Dylan, has the crazy idea that he can get them to grow.

There’s a romantic triangle involving Dr Dylan’s wife Terry and a neighbour. It leads to murder, and it leads to other bizarre consequences.

This is a genuinely weird and creepy story and it’s pretty good.

The Black Hand

The Black Hand was directed by Curt Siodmak and written by Siodmak and Richard Jairus Castle. It’s a pretty hackneyed idea. Dr Heinz Schloss is involved in an auto accident and to escape from his burning car he has to amputate his own hand (which is at least a suitably macabre touch).

He transplants a psychopathic murderer’s hand onto his arm (without knowing that it’s a murderer’s hand) and of course you know what’s going to happen next. It’s mostly predictable but the fact Dr Schloss is a surgeon adds a bit of interest - a surgeon has to be able to trust his hands.

It’s reasonably well executed but the basic idea has been handled better before, notably in the movies The Hands of Orlac (1924) and Mad Love (1935).

The Photograph

The Photograph was written and directed by Curt Siodmak. Donald Powell is a fashion photographer and he’s a bit of a creep. His friend Charlie thinks he needs a break. He should go to Maine and do some real photography. Donald takes his advice. The first thing that attracts his interest in Maine is an old house, but he’s even more interested in the young woman who emerges from the house. For Donald it’s an instantaneous obsession. With disastrous consequences.

Now it’s one of the photos he took in Maine that has him worried. It doesn’t look the same any more.

This episode is inspired by the classic M.R. James ghost story The Mezzotint. It’s slightly more interesting than it appears at first glance since there’s considerable ambiguity about what actually happened in Maine. It’s even possible that nothing happened.

Fever

Fever was written and directed by Curt Siodmak.

This episode shows much more promise. It’s a tale of a young doctor in Vienna the early years of the 20th century who is treating an ageing, brooding, alcoholic painter. The artist painted the same woman over and over, and the doctor becomes obsessed with her. Then he sees her in the house cross the street. But there isn’t a house across the street. And surely she’d be much older by now? So it it really her? Is she alive? Is he dreaming or awake? OK, it’s an idea that’s been done before but it’s executed with considerable skill and style.

And it is a nicely spooky story. I liked this one.

The Girl in the Glacier

The Girl in the Glacier was written and directed by Curt Siodmak. The body of a naked girl, frozen in the ice of a glacier for 50,000 years, is found in a mineshaft. The block of ice in which she is embedded is taken to a museum. Dr. Ben Seastrom, the anthropologist put in charge of trying to preserve the girl’s body, becomes obsessed by her. He starts to develop some pretty strange ideas about her.

In fact he starts to fall in love with the long-dead girl. He buys some pretty clothes for her. He also gets the idea that maybe she isn’t really dead, that maybe if he can find a way to very slowly unfreeze her she’ll come back to life. Maybe he’s brilliant but he’s clearly crazy. Or is he?

Again it’s not a dazzlingly original idea but it’s handled quite well.

Condemned in the Crystal

Condemned in the Crystal was directed by Curt Siodmak and written by Dory Previn (better known as a singer-songwriter).

John Radian is a middle-aged man troubled by dreams. The dreams take place in an old semi-derelict building and they are about the foretelling of the future. His psychiatrist explains to him that he wants to know his future but is also afraid of knowing. The psychiatrist suggests that he should face his fears. He should go to that building (the building really exists and Radian knows where it is).

Radian takes his doctor’s advice. When he finds the building he finds a gypsy woman, a fortune-teller. She sees John Radian’s future in her crystal ball. She tells him his future and that he cannot escape it. Of course he tries to do so.

This is a nicely suspenseful episode, with some cleverly ambiguous touches. We know what is going to happen because we’ve heard the fortune-teller tell Radian, but her prediction seems to make no sense. We cannot see (and John Radian cannot see) how such a thing could happen. The ending is effective. A good episode.

Final Thoughts

It’s not easy to make an overall judgment on this series based on the half-dozen episodes that I’ve seen. A couple of the episodes are certainly unoriginal but others really are pleasingly weird and disturbing. 13 Demon Street had potential and it’s worth a look.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974-75), updated review

Carl Kolchak, investigative reporter with a nose for stories involving the supernatural, the paranormal and the just plain weird, made his first appearance in two TV movies. These were successful enough to spawn a series, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which aired on the American ABC network in 1974-75. Sadly the series lasted only a single season. The network might have been well advised to give the series more time to establish an audience. After its cancellation it quickly achieved cult status and became extremely popular in syndication.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker was to the 70s what The X-Files was to the 90s. Kolchak keeps running across stories that just cannot be explained except as supernatural or paranormal phenomena or occasionally just weird fringe science. If only he could just get hold of some hard evidence. But he never does. Or if he does, it gets taken away from him or destroyed. Or for some reason his stories just get killed. But just like Mulder Carl Kolchak never gives up.

Darren McGavin was perfectly cast as Kolchak, a rumpled eccentric who revels in his reputation as a pushy oddball. Kolchak has its tongue-in-cheek side and it has its darker side as well and McGavin handles both effortlessly (anyone who doubts McGavin’s ability to be dark and edgy obviously hasn’t seen him in the late 50s Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer series).

You just really really want Kolchak to one day get the evidence he needs, you know he never will but you know he’ll just keep on trying. He’s a reporter. He doesn’t care about having doors slammed in his face. He doesn’t care about being harassed by the cops. He doesn’t care if people thinks he’s annoying and pushy. He doesn’t care if he makes his editor want to tear his hair out. Those are just the challenges that make being a reporter so much fun. And Kolchak loves being a reporter more than life itself.

This is a series that had a lot of promise but it never quite found its feet. Of course it wasn’t given time to do so. At times it does rely too much on Monster of the Week stories. It’s never quite sure if it wants to stick to the slightly jokey tongue-in-cheek tone or if it wants to get dark and serious. The episodes that rely on special effects suffer from the fact that the effects sometimes look cheap. But the promise was there and there are plenty of solid episodes with original and creepy ideas.

The series may just have been ahead of its time. Even science fiction series had a rough time on US television in the 60s. Weird stuff seemed to be accepted in anthology series (such as The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone) but perhaps audiences were not ready for a series that must have seemed an odd mix of a conventional newspaper reporter drama with outrageous story lines. It may have been too much of a collision between television drama normality and weirdness. The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone really didn’t pretend to take place in our reality, but Kolchak did. Two decades later The X-Files was a major hit, following just about the same formula.

Episode Guide

In Mr R.I.N.G. Kolchak stumble across a secret government robotics project called R.I.N.G. (Robomatic Internalized Nerve Ganglia). And it appears that one of their robots is loose, and he’s kinda dangerous. This is a very paranoid X-Files sort of story with the US Government, and especially the military, as the enemy. And the military is a much scarier enemy than any mere monster. An extremely good episode.

They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be… is the other Kolchak episode that is in the X-Files kind of mould. It starts with some seriously weird unexplained happenings. Zoo animals supposedly vanishing. People dying and the post-mortems reveal odd disturbing things. Electronic equipment that goes missing. There’s no actual evidence of anything, so why are the Feds so interested and what are they covering up? If you can’t afford fancy special effects a really good option is to avoid showing anything and rely on suggestion and that’s what his episode does. A lot of people don’t like this episode and I can see why. It is very low-key and lacks any real scares. But it is extremely interesting and I’m quite fond of it.

In Primal Scream an oil company has found some strange cells in a core sample from the Arctic. What’s really strange is that the cells are millions of years old but they show signs of life. Then there are the murders. Murders so brutal it’s as if they were carried out by something not quite human. And Carl Kolchak has some photos of footprints are they’re not quite human either. A fairly typical Kolchak episode, a bit silly but kind of fun.

The better Kolchak episodes are the ones that don’t rely on guys in monster suits and have to rely instead on atmosphere and genuine scares. Episodes like The Trevi Collection in which Kolchak discovers the links between the worlds of high fashion and witchcraft. There are some women who want to have it all, and they are willing to practise the black arts to achieve their desires. Store mannequins are always slightly creepy (the whole uncanny valley thing) and they play a big rôle in this episode. There are also a couple of pretty devious murders. On the whole an excellent episode.

In Chopper a graveyard is cleared for the construction of condominiums. Disturbing the dead is not a good idea. Several brutal slayings follow, with witnesses reporting a headless figure on a motorcycle. Carl gets some photos of tyre tracks but that makes things more confusing - such tyres have not been made for nearly twenty years. They’re the tyres you would have expected to find on the sorts of motorcycles that were popular with motorcycle gangs in the 1950s. Of course there’s no point in trying to tell the police any of this. Kolchak will have to deal with this mystery on his own, if he lives long enough. A pretty decent idea mostly well executed even if the headless biker is a bit unconvincing.

Demon in Lace involves the mysterious deaths of a number of young male college students. There’s no obvious cause of death but they died looking very scared. In each case the body was found along with the body of a young woman, but what worries Kolchak is that the young women had not died at the same time as the young men. And then there’s that Mesopotamian tablet with the weird inscription. The translation of one of the words as succubus worries Kolchak a lot. A truly excellent episode.

Legacy of Terror begins with two murders, both victims having had their hearts torn out. Literally. The only people Carl can think of who do things like that are the Aztecs, but Aztecs in Chicago in the 1970s. It seems unlikely. Then a third similar murder follows and Kolchak starts to see a pattern. A very good episode.

The Knightly Murders begins with a political boss being killed by a crossbow bolt. More murders follow, all done with medieval weaponry. Is the murderer a disgruntled medievalist, an actual medieval knight, some kind of lunatic or something else entirely. Kolchak has his own ideas after having a close encounter with a lance. John Dehner guest stars as the delightfully egotistical, highly literary but incurably lazy Captain Vernon Rausch, a legend in the Homicide Squad. A good fun episode.

What do eternal youth, Greek goddesses and dating agencies have in common? Quite a lot perhaps. Beauty and physical perfection seem to Carl to be the connecting thread. Youth Killer actually starts with 90-year-olds dropping dead all over Chicago. Not very unusual, but the circumstances are puzzling. Carl is particularly intrigued by the ring and the glass eye. This is one of the best Kolchak episodes, combining cleverness with subtle creepiness and wit.

The Sentry takes place in a gigantic underground data storage facility. It seems there have been a few accidents at the facility. Bodies found with teeth marks. Reptilian teeth marks. The cop in charge of the case is a glamorous lady detective but she’s determined to stop Carl from digging around in this case. The setting is very cool but the monsters are pretty silly.  It’s still a fun episode in a good kind of way.

Final Thoughts

OK, some of the guy-in-a-rubber-suit monsters are a bit embarrassing and there are a few dud episodes but the good episodes outnumber the bad ones by a considerable margin. And the good episodes are often very good indeed. Darren McGavin is so likeable he makes even the weaker episodes watchable.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker is immense fun. Highly recommended.

Thriller (1960) - four episodes

Thriller (AKA Boris Karloff Presents) screened on NBC from 1960 to 1962, was one of the legendary American anthology series of that era. What’s interesting about these series is that they all had their own distinctive flavours. Alfred Hitchcock Presents concentrated on crime stories with ironic stings in the tail. The Twilight Zone concentrated on unsettling stories of the weird and paranormal. The Outer Limits was science fiction generously laced with horror. Thriller started life as a mystery/suspense series in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents mould but quite early on the decision was made to move into overt horror but this was a gradual progression rather than a sudden change.

As a result of this what was great about Thriller was that you could never be quite sure if you were going to get supernatural horror or stories dealing purely with human evil. What makes the first season so interesting is that the early forays into horror are often stories that appear to be supernatural horror but turn out to have rational explanations but as the series progressed the supernatural starts to make its presence felt.

All of the American anthology series of that era have their strengths but Thriller had a visual style that was more flamboyant and more gothic than any of its rivals.

I’ve picked four episodes from the first half of the first season to talk about today.

The Purple Room

The Purple Room (written and directed by Douglas Heyes) has a classic much-used setup for a haunted house story. Duncan Corey (Rip Torn) has inherited an old house called Black Oak from his brother. The house is in the middle of an area slated for redevelopment so in a couple of years it will be worth a fortune. Under the terms of the will Duncan cannot sell the house until he has lived in it for one year, but he must make his decision as to whether he will live in it after spending just one night there.

If he decides not to live there the house will go to his cousin Rachel Judson (Patricia Barry) and her husband Oliver (Richard Anderson).

Duncan is both a cynic and a sceptic. He wants to sell that house and he is arrogant and selfish.

Rachel and Oliver meet him at the house and they seem to be pretty obviously trying to spook him, with tales of ghosts and mysterious deaths and other assorted horrors associated with the house. Duncan isn’t worried. He doesn’t believe in ghosts and he has a gun so he’s confident he can deal with any humans who might try any fake haunting nonsense. Duncan has very good reason to suspect that Rachel and Oliver are going to do anything they can to frighten him so when he starts to hear all the classic haunted house sounds - the creaking doors, the footsteps on the stairs, chains rattling etc - he naturally assumes that they’re responsible for those sounds.

But Duncan is not quite as confident as he seems to be. Being alone in an old isolated very spooky house, lit only by candles, really is pretty scary. He starts to get a bit spooked. And he suspects that Rachel and Oliver have drugged him as well.

Things don’t turn out the way any of the three protagonists expected when the plot twists start to kick in. The setup might be utterly conventional but Douglas Heyes (a great television) writer knows how to take such a setup and add some nasty twists.

The first thing you’ll notice about this episode is that the exterior shots of Black Oak are in fact the Bates House from Psycho. Thriller was made at Universal Studios and that house (which has been used many times since) was available and let’s face it, it’s a fantastic setting.

The three leads all give fine performances. They don’t trust each other and the viewer isn’t going to trust any of them. We know there’s going to be dirty work afoot, even if the supernatural doesn’t take a hand. And this being Thriller we can’t be absolutely certain that the supernatural won’t take a hand.

What’s striking about this episode is just how moody and atmospheric it is. And how gothic it is. Low-key lighting, lots of shadows, night scenes. Not quite what you expect from a 1960 television series. It doesn’t really look like television. It looks rather cinematic.

With a very strong cast, great writing and directing by Douglas Heyes and all that atmosphere this really is a very very good episode.

The Prediction

The Prediction (directed by John Brahm and written by Donald S. Sanford) is one of several episodes in which Karloff himself takes the starring rôle.

He plays Clay Mace, who has a very successful mentalist act. Clay is just an entertainer and would never claim to have any actual occult or paranormal powers. Or at least he thought he didn’t have any such powers, until one night he sees a vision of a young boxer being killed in the ring. And the prediction comes true.

Other predictions come true as well. This is very upsetting for Clay. Not only did he never claim to possess such powers, he never wanted to.

Clay’s assistant in his act is a charming young and beautiful woman named Noreen (Audrey Dalton). Noreen’s father is a drunk and treats her badly so she looks to Clay as a substitute father figure. Things get awkward when Clay sees a vision of the future which involves Noreen’s fiancé. The ending is effective and satisfying.

This is another example of Thriller taking an unoriginal idea but making it work, and work very well. Once again there’s plenty of slightly unsettling atmosphere, the visuals are impressive by 1960 television standards, the directing is tight and the performances are superb.

Karloff is in great form - slightly spooky but very sympathetic. Clay is a man desperately trying to come to terms with a very unwelcome gift which threatens his peace of mind and even his sanity. Karloff never overplays his performance.

The supporting cast is strong. Audrey Dalton is charming and likeable. Alan Caillou is terrific as her caddish father. Abraham Sofaer is wonderful as Gus, the owner of the club in which Clay does his act and a loyal friend.

The basic story idea had been done before (most notably in 1934 in the movie The Clairvoyant with Claude Rains) but it’s executed extremely well and Karloff’s performance is enough to make it something special.

Hay-Fork and Bill-Hook

Hay-Fork and Bill-Hook (written by Alan Caillou and directed by Herschel Daugherty) really piles on the gothic atmosphere. Detective-Inspector Harry Roberts (Kenneth Haigh) has been sent from Scotland Yard to investigate a murder in the small Welsh village of Dark Woods. An old man was killed - he was stabbed with a hay-fork and a cross was carved on his throat with a bill-hook. Which certainly looks like a ritual murder - this is the way the locals used to deal with witches.

The villagers of Dark Woods are not still living in the Middle Ages, They’re still living in a time earlier than that, a time when druids carried out ritual sacrifices. Witchcraft is taken for granted in Dark Woods. Harry Roberts is appalled to discover that the local policeman (there’s only one), a man named Evans, believes implicitly in witches. The Chief Constable, Sir Wilfred (Alan Caillou), assures Roberts that all the villagers believe in witchcraft. Sir Wilfred is worried that the villagers might found out that Roberts’ wife Nesta (Audrey Dalton) thought she saw a black dog on the road. The villagers think black dogs are symbols of witchcraft.

And now the villagers have burnt an old woman for witchcraft.

Harry Roberts slowly comes to realise that the village of Dark Woods is not part of the modern world. He’s not dealing with ordinary murders.

This episode is in some ways an anticipation of the wonderful 1973 British horror movie The Wicker Man, which also deals with a city policeman confronting ancient beliefs in a remote community.

Once again the acting is a major strength and when combined with lots of gothic cinematography the result is a very fine episode.

Well of Doom

Well of Doom (adapted by Donald S. Sanford from a story by John Clemons and directed by John Brahm) again features the kind of gothic visuals more usually associated with Universal horror movies of the 30s than with 1960s television. It’s obvious that the similarities to the look of those 30s Universal movies is very deliberate. And the gothic atmosphere is laid on very very thick indeed. The original short story by John Clemons had appeared in the Thrilling Mystery pulp magazine in 1936.

It is night and Robert Penrose (Ronald Howard), heir to a large estate and to be married the following day, is on his way to his bachelor party when he and faithful family retainer Teal (Torin Thatcher) are kidnapped. It’s not an ordinary kidnapping - they have been kidnapped by Beelzebub himself (calling himself Squire Moloch) and his servant Master Styx (Richard Kiel).

Penrose, who has apparently been a somewhat irresponsible rich young man in his youth, tries to buy his way out of trouble but Moloch informs him that all his money would not be enough to purchase his freedom. Penrose ends up being imprisoned in a dark dungeon where he slowly becomes aware of Moloch’s fiendish intentions.

The story is fine but it’s the visuals and the acting that make this one of the great Thriller episodes. Ronald Howard is excellent as the slightly effete slightly ineffectual hero who is going to have to play the hero if he’s to have any chance of survival. Henry Daniell goes gloriously over-the-top as the evil Moloch. Richard Kiel is equally good as the sinister Master Styx. Fintan Meyler is OK as Penrose’s bride-to-be but it’s really a very small part.

Well of Doom is a perfect example of Thriller at its most typical and at its best.

Final Thoughts

So, four episodes and all of them excellent and highly recommended. And they’re a fine example of Thriller in its transitional phase from a mystery/suspense series to a horror series.

I’ve posted a number of previous Thriller reviews here, here and here.