Thriller - The Complete Season One
Not to be confused with the 1960s American anthology series with Boris Karloff, thisThrilleris a British anthology program that ran from 1973 to 1976 and the brainchild of writer-producer-director Brian Clemens, best known forThe Avengers. A cult favorite in its native country (though frustratingly difficult to see for the last two decades), the show aired briefly in United States through theABC Mystery Movie, which repackaged the episodes with new introductions and titles.Though A&E;'s boxed set packaging presentsThrilleras a horror classic, the ten stories (each running 65 minutes) presented in the Season One set lean more heavily towards suspense in theAlfred Hitchcock Presentsvein, though some stories feature distinct supernatural elements: "Spell of Evil" has Diane Cilento as a witch preying on widowed businessman Edward De Souza, while "Someone at the Top of the Stairs" stars Donna Mills (Knots Landing) and Judy Carne as tourists in a boarding house with a terrible secret, and "A Place to Die" addresses pagan rituals. The rest of the episodes generate their chills from distinctly human subjects: "Lady Killer" pits cold-blooded con men Robert Powell andThe Avengers' Linda Thorson against naive Barbara Feldon (Get Smart), while "The Colour of Blood" has an attorney's secretary mistake an escaped serial killer for a client. Uniformly well-acted by a solid cast of British and American talent,Thriller: Season Oneis a taut ten-pack of television frights, delivered with class and skill by Clemens and a talented group of directors. The four-disc set features interviews with Clemens and directors Shaun O'Riordan and John Cooper; Clemens also provides amusingly morbid introductions to each episode à la Hitchcock.--Paul Gaita