{"id":10653,"date":"2015-10-29T20:00:02","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T01:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=10653"},"modified":"2015-10-29T10:32:25","modified_gmt":"2015-10-29T15:32:25","slug":"thriller-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/10653","title":{"rendered":"Thriller, part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part one, featuring Richard Kiel, a Scooby-Doo mystery, a rooster-beast, Ida Lupino, Barr\u00e9 Lyndon (not Barry Lyndon), a mannequin museum, John Ireland and a voodoo cult can be found here<\/a>. I watched those four years ago, so at this rate I’ll be through season one in the year 2054. Thriller<\/em> paired well with Black Sabbath<\/a><\/em>, which also had three episodes hosted by Boris Karloff.<\/p>\n

The Twisted Image<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

First episode of the show started off with a bang. Leslie Nielsen (post-Forbidden Planet<\/em> and Tammy and the Bachelor<\/a><\/em>) plays bland but successful executive and family man Alan, and not one but two people are insanely obsessed with him. Secretary Lily (Natalie Trundy of the Planet of the Apes<\/em> series) wants to marry him and Mailroom Merle (George Grizzard of Happy Birthday, Wanda June<\/em>) wants to be him. Lily stalks Alan and writes letters to his wife (Dianne Foster of Drive a Crooked Road<\/em>). Merle is more dangerous, steals Alan’s watch, wallet, car and daughter, and murders Lily when she says he’s no Alan.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Typical plot-contrivance follows. Alan goes to Lily’s apartment (because if your wife suspects you’re having an affair, you should definitely go to the girl’s apartment alone at night), finds her dead, is spotted at the scene, then goes looking for Merle alone.<\/p>\n

Wife: “Why can’t you call the police?”
\nAlan: “Judy, you don’t understand. I can’t go into details now, just take it easy.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Happy ending, family values are upheld, etc. Lot of good close-ups of Lily with confident, creepy eyes. Also featuring Constance Ford (the 1962 The Cabinet of Caligari<\/em>) as Merle’s abusive sister and Virginia Christine (Becky’s cousin in Invasion of the Body Snatchers<\/a><\/em>) as his annoyed boss. Arthur Hiller later made See No Evil, Hear No Evil<\/em>, which is not a horror movie, though quite horrible in its own way.<\/p>\n

Pigeons From Hell<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

“Those were no ordinary pigeons – they were the pigeons from hell” says Karloff without even smiling. Maybe Thriller<\/em> was trying to distance itself from the smartass introductions on Alfred Hitchcock Presents<\/em>. Too bad the intro proved to be the most amusing part of this talky, boring episode.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Two doofus college-age brothers get stuck in a swamp, immediately blame it on the South, then camp out in an abandoned house, where one brother appears from upstairs all bloody attempting to axe-murder the other. Survivor Tim (Brandon De Wilde of Hud<\/em> and Shane<\/em>) flees, interrupts a redneck sheriff (Crahan Denton, a huge racist in Bunuel’s The Young One<\/a><\/em>) who was drinking with his buddies, tells the crazy story and is accused of killing his brother, the end.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But wait, it’s not the end! The most fantastic part of this episode isn’t the house full of haunted pigeons or the zombie remnants of the family that owned it, but the rural cop deciding to investigate this city kid’s story, consider the evidence and finally believe him and try to discover what really happened. From a story by Robert Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Rose’s Last Summer<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Drunken nuisance ex-movie star Rose French (played by actual movie star Mary Astor, princess in The Palm Beach Story<\/a><\/em>) goes on a trip, is found dead in a random suburb. Her friend Frank and ex-husband Haley (Jack “brother of Roger<\/a>” Livesey) are more suspicious than the cops were, investigate the family whose yard Rose died in.<\/p>\n

Mary!<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Turns out Rose has been hired by the family to be their dying mother, who needs to stay alive a few more weeks to claim inheritance from eccentric relative (a genius doll inventor!), after which they’d planned to dispose of Rose to protect their secret before Frank rescued her.<\/p>\n

Real mom, fake mom:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part one, featuring Richard Kiel, a Scooby-Doo mystery, a rooster-beast, Ida Lupino, Barr\u00e9 Lyndon (not Barry Lyndon), a mannequin museum, John Ireland and a voodoo cult can be found here. I watched those four years ago, so at this rate I’ll be through season one in the year 2054. Thriller paired well with Black Sabbath, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[410,239,1139,110,54,30,2013,52],"class_list":["post-10653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1960s","tag-birds","tag-boris-karloff","tag-ghosts","tag-horror","tag-identity","tag-stalker","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10653"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10655,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10653\/revisions\/10655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}