Well this is one bizarre little episode featuring a serial killer on the loose (Meade Martin), and a poor, mixed up newsstand operator (Warren Oates) who wants to confess to his murders. Even an hour long format wouldn't have been enough to develop Benny's troubled character and why he was so conflicted, but it's enough to provide Ray Kenton (Joe Maross) with a potential alibi when he decides his wife (Beverly Garland) has to go. Deep in debt to loan shark Bedell (David Alpert), poor old Ray finds the interest on his gambling debts just went up a hundred percent, and he's running out of time.
You know, you have to be quite desperate to try and pull off a scheme like Ray's. His plan was built on a pretty fair amount of confidence that the guy he bumped into one night might actually have been the guy the police were after. He really didn't have much more to go on than a circumstantial bump in the night, and there were a whole lot of things that could go wrong. And they did. Poor Ray, you'll find his picture under the word 'schmuck' in the dictionary.
Curiously, this was the second time in a Thriller episode where there was an abrupt lighting change that challenged continuity. Considering the fact that Ray was at the local gin mill at a time approaching midnight when he laid out all his personal info to the strangler, the next scene of George (Charles Aidman) dropping Ruth (Garland) off at her apartment seemed to occur in daylight. It may have simply been a case of providing better lighting for filming purposes, but the potential killer sure cast a dark shadow as he ran up the stairs. A similar scenario played out in episode #1.6 - The Watcher, when day turned into night from one minute to the next.
Anyway, it was cool to see Warren Oates and Beverly Garland show up here; I always enjoy seeing them whenever they turn up in a film or TV show. I've also seen enough Westerns and movies to know that it was Claude Akins who handed the captain the phone at the police station, appearing on screen for about five seconds in an uncredited appearance.
You know, you have to be quite desperate to try and pull off a scheme like Ray's. His plan was built on a pretty fair amount of confidence that the guy he bumped into one night might actually have been the guy the police were after. He really didn't have much more to go on than a circumstantial bump in the night, and there were a whole lot of things that could go wrong. And they did. Poor Ray, you'll find his picture under the word 'schmuck' in the dictionary.
Curiously, this was the second time in a Thriller episode where there was an abrupt lighting change that challenged continuity. Considering the fact that Ray was at the local gin mill at a time approaching midnight when he laid out all his personal info to the strangler, the next scene of George (Charles Aidman) dropping Ruth (Garland) off at her apartment seemed to occur in daylight. It may have simply been a case of providing better lighting for filming purposes, but the potential killer sure cast a dark shadow as he ran up the stairs. A similar scenario played out in episode #1.6 - The Watcher, when day turned into night from one minute to the next.
Anyway, it was cool to see Warren Oates and Beverly Garland show up here; I always enjoy seeing them whenever they turn up in a film or TV show. I've also seen enough Westerns and movies to know that it was Claude Akins who handed the captain the phone at the police station, appearing on screen for about five seconds in an uncredited appearance.