A simple, but clever premise ,makes this episode fun to watch. The fine acting of Warren Stevens creates two completely different characters, when the nervous bum puts on the shoes, and is transformed into the cold blooded gangster who used to own them.
For trivia buffs, it's fun to see a very glamorous and sexy Joan Marshall as the girlfriend. She is best known for her unusual role in William Castle's gimmicky chiller Homicidal.
I've never seen this acknowledged anywhere, but I feel this teleplay bears a strong resemblance to a 1940 Universal movie called Black Friday. Boris Karloff surgically transplants part of a gangster's brain into the skull of a college professor who's dying. Karloff hypnotizes the professor to obey him, and remember nothing. They go to New York, where Karloff suspects the gangster has hidden his stolen fortune. Periodically, something will cause the mild mannered professor to actually physically transform into a tough gangster, who goes around terrorizing his former friends and enemies, who were responsible for his death. At one point, he visits the gangster's girlfriend, and scares her with his knowledge of things only the dead man could have known. There's even a scene in the luxury apartment, where he orders her to make him a drink. The gangsters speculate as to who this guy might be, since "Red" Cannon, the former gang leader, is dead and buried. They guess it might be someone Cannon hired to impersonate him, having told him lots of things before dying. The truth is too bizarre for them to guess, though they get unnerved at his success in bumping them off, one by one.
There are so many similar ideas, right down to specific scenes, that I wonder if Charles Beaumont saw this on the late show one night, and it became lodged in his subconscious.
For trivia buffs, it's fun to see a very glamorous and sexy Joan Marshall as the girlfriend. She is best known for her unusual role in William Castle's gimmicky chiller Homicidal.
I've never seen this acknowledged anywhere, but I feel this teleplay bears a strong resemblance to a 1940 Universal movie called Black Friday. Boris Karloff surgically transplants part of a gangster's brain into the skull of a college professor who's dying. Karloff hypnotizes the professor to obey him, and remember nothing. They go to New York, where Karloff suspects the gangster has hidden his stolen fortune. Periodically, something will cause the mild mannered professor to actually physically transform into a tough gangster, who goes around terrorizing his former friends and enemies, who were responsible for his death. At one point, he visits the gangster's girlfriend, and scares her with his knowledge of things only the dead man could have known. There's even a scene in the luxury apartment, where he orders her to make him a drink. The gangsters speculate as to who this guy might be, since "Red" Cannon, the former gang leader, is dead and buried. They guess it might be someone Cannon hired to impersonate him, having told him lots of things before dying. The truth is too bizarre for them to guess, though they get unnerved at his success in bumping them off, one by one.
There are so many similar ideas, right down to specific scenes, that I wonder if Charles Beaumont saw this on the late show one night, and it became lodged in his subconscious.