It's actually a bit of a surprise to me that the series was far from the commercial juggernaut that I had pictured. Running for two seasons on NBC from 1960-62, Thriller nonethless managed to crank out 67 episodes during that timeframe. I really miss the days when bitching actors didn't limit TV seasons to 22-some shows. It's kind of like how I believed Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories to be this huge, Brobdingnagian-deal when I was a kid only to find out that the only reason it stayed afloat as long as it did was because it was such a huge investment to take on. Just like that series, however, whatever commercial failings it had, this show was a MAJOR creative success. While it was initially patterned after Alfred Hitchcock Presents and a fair bit of the episodes are of the "false true crime" variety, it also took its creative license to go way off the beaten path that the Hitchman dare not tread and go completely batshit crazy on occasion. Of course, it's those latter episodes that are preferred by this reporter.
The series is hosted by Boris Karloff (who also starred in a few episodes), and having seen both this and Mario Bava's Three Faces of Fear, this dude had the uncanny ability to present some of the most out-there material in celluloid history and sound completely dead serious when talking about this stuff. Make no mistake; he was DEAD serious, as sure as his name was Boris Karloff. I'm also a huge fan of the overall presentation of the show, with big-time cliffhangers before almost every commercial break followed by that awesome way-cooler-than-Andrew Garfield spiderweb logo design popping up and lulling us out of the action for the break. And the score...yikes. I mentioned it earlier, but the people behind the music of this show were the absolute masters at creeping you out. There are episodes of this series that unnerve me as a battle-hardened 30-year-old nerdy guy (more on those in a bit) due largely to the music contained within. I can't imagine watching this shit as a kid - this stuff would have scared me more than that godforsaken "Allegash Abductions" segment on Unsolved Mysteries ever did.
Which brings me to the money section of this review - the top episodes. I haven't quite seen every episode of Thriller, but going through the episode list on Wikipedia, I HAVE paid witness to roughly 90% of them. Very few of them qualify as clunkers, although a majority of the subpar ones fall into the "crime thirller" category. Supernatural, gothic horror was this series' bread and butter, and nobody did it better.
Ladies and gentlemen, the top five episodes. Punch these babies into Youtube if you've got 50 minutes and some sleep to spare.
1. "Pigeons from Hell" - Arguably the most popular show with the series' fans, and for good reason, because it's frickin' awesome. Based on a short story by Robert E. Howard (written in 1934, amazingly enough), it concerns two brothers traveling in the deep south and spending a night in a deserted plantation-style manor. From there, we're treated to a tour-de-force consisting of part ghost story, part voodoo horror tale, and part holy-hell-creepy Deep South imagery visual fest. If there is ONE thing I can bitch about, it's that the two principal leads (Brandon DeWilde and David Whorf) are a bit on the dry side in the acting department. EVERYTHING else will stick with you long after the ending credits tick by. Fantastic.
2. "The Incredible Doktor Markesen" - The best episode of the series that actually features Karloff in a starring role, and for my money, it has that guy with head-screws beat by a longshot. Dick York of Bewitched fame arrives at a creepy run-down mansion (noticing a trend?) with his pretty young wife to stay with his uncle (Karloff), only to discover a heaping helping of trouble on the horizon. It seems that Uncle Markesen is involved in some very morally questionable activities involving the reanimation of dead corpses. This episode features one of the most unnerving final shots of any horror story I've seen. We're talking Sleepaway Camp territory here.
3. "Waxworks" - A choice that is not listed by many fans of the show, but I love it. Written by Robert Bloch (the author of the novel that Psycho is based on), this is one of the very early examples of the tried-and-true "wax figurines come to life to MURDER" plot that has been done to death since then. I've got to go with this one as a favorite, because it has a closing swerve worthy of anything Vince Russo could conjure up.
4. "The Hungry Glass" - It seems like there wasn't an anthology series in the early '60s that did't feature William Shatner in an episode or two, and it was only a matter of time before he popped up on this one. The material in this one is top-notch, as Shatner and his new wife purchase a seaside home only to disciver that it has a TERRIBLE SECRET (and capitalizing those words makes me all kinds of happy). There was an episode of Amazing Stories called "Mirror, Mirror" that also had this episode's theme, with mirror images coming to life and attacking the living, and I've got to go with this version as the preferred choice.
5. "The Purple Room" - This episode stars some very recognizable names, including Rip Torn, Richard Anderson, and Alan Napier. They've got a great story to bring to life, as the heir to a big fortune has to spend a night in a creepy house in order to gain his will money. Any student of the genre is well aware that this will not exactly go off without a hitch. The ungodly creepy look of the specter in this episode is another one of those things that will take up some permanent residence in your psyche.
JUST missing the top five is "Masquerade," a story full of dry humor as a honeymooning couple (the female played by Samantha Stephens herself Elizabeth Montgomery) stopping at a countryside house for a night's sleep only to find a family led by the incomparable John Carradine who claim to be vampires. It's also worth noting that the exterior location house is the freakin' BATES MOTEL.
Of course, that's just a sampling of the greatness contained within this series. The series is available on DVD for all of you supposed normal people, and at sixty-some dollars for 67 hour-long episodes, it's an outstanding value. Unfortunately, the DVD set doesn't have subtitles, meaning that it excludes me. Lazy bastards. Nope, for me, I prefer to watch Thriller the way God intended - on TV, with actual commercial breaks inserted after the music-and-logo transition, flickering away at two in the morning. Just as sure as his name was Boris Karloff.
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