four Thrillers from Brian Clemens (1974-5)

ITC had a major success in the 1970s with their Thriller anthology series, created by Brian Clemens (who wrote all forty-three episodes). Each episode was feature length allowing for multiple plot twists. What you expect from Clemens are stories that are not necessarily very original but he generally manages to make even old plot ideas seem reasonably fresh and entertaining.

The production values are standard for early 70s British television - shot on videotape, very studio-bound and looking generally very cheap. By the mid-70s the style of British television changed dramatically in the wake of the success of The Sweeney which made Thriller look a bit old-fashioned and even at times just a little shoddy as far as sets were concerned. It doesn’t really matter. Clemens’ stories have enough going for them to maintain the viewer’s interest.

The fourth season aired from late 1974 and on into 1975.

The acting is variable, sometimes very good and sometimes very bad.

Of course there’s the bonus of some amazingly kitsch 70s clothing. And 70s wallpaper and suchlike things which in my view add to the charm of the series.

Screamer opens season four. A young American woman working for the US Embassy is heading off to the country by train to stay with friends. She is a bit nervous since several women have recently been raped near the railway station where her friends live. It turns out her fears were justified. A man follows her home from the station and brutally rapes her.

Nicola (Pamela Franklin) recovers from the attack after spending several months in a mental hospital. She is now cured. Well, almost cured. She still has nightmares. And she still thinks she sees the man who raped her. She still has screaming episodes even in broad daylight. But she is getting better. And the police have caught the man who raped her. So everything will be OK now. Except that everything is not OK. It’s not OK at all.

Pamela Franklin does a pretty fair job as the understandably disturbed Nicola. Derek Smith is fun as the perpetually exasperated, short-tempered but dogged Inspector Charles.

This is an episode for connoisseurs of 70s kitsch clothing. Frances White as Nicola’s friend Vima wears some extraordinary dresses, the most bizarre of which makes her look like a demented milk maid.

The problem with this episode is that you’re going to figure out what’s going on very quickly and the plot twists are all too predictable. The level of political incorrectness is almost off the scale in this episode, political incorrectness being one of the great delights of 70s British television.

Nurse Will Make It Better is one of the rare supernatural horror episodes and it really is unequivocal supernatural horror. An American diplomat’s daughter, Charley (Linda Liles), is crippled in a riding accident. She now needs full-time nursing but to say that she’s a difficult patient would be an understatement. No nurse lasts more than a week, until the arrival of Bessy Morne (Diana Dors). Bessy is more than equal to the task. Bessy is not just a nurse. She promises Charley that she will be able to walk again. Bessy can deliver on her promise but her methods owe more to black magic than medical science.

Charley’s sister Ruth (Andrea Marcovicci) becomes more and more worried, especially when the third sister, sixteen-year-old Susy, starts behaving oddly. Ruth realises her whole family is in danger but knowing this is one thing, doing anything effective about it is another, given Bessy Morne’s formidable satanic powers. The only hope may lie in a burnt-out drunken wreck of a priest named Lyall (Patrick Troughton).

If Thriller has a flaw it’s that it sometimes veers too close to out-and-out melodrama. In this episode this flaw becomes a major asset. Diana Dors is at her outrageous best. Bessy is one of the great horror villainesses. Patrick Troughton, in the minor but crucial role as the gin-soaked Lyall, decides to see if he can match Diana Dors in the overacting stakes. He can’t, but he gives it his best shot. Linda Liles, Andrea Marcovicci and Ed Bishop (as the diplomat’s faithful and rather amiable bodyguard) are all very solid. 

This episode is a real treat with Diana Dors making it an absolute must-watch.

A Killer in Every Corner was episode 5 of season 4 and originally aired in 1974. This is a psychological horror story. Literally - it’s a horror story about psychologists. 

The brilliant but possibly eccentric Professor Marcus Carnaby (Patrick Magee) has invited three psychology students to his home for the weekend - Tim Hunter (Peter Settelen), Helga Muller (Petra Markham) and Sylvia Dee (Joanna Pettet). Since Carnaby is one of the world’s foremost psychologists the students are naturally honoured and excited. The weekend will certainly be exciting, but not in the way they expected.

What the students would of course really love to see is one of Professor Carnaby’s actual experiments. They will certainly get their wish.

It certainly isn’t long before we realise that the professor’s experiments would get him into a good deal of trouble with an ethics committee. In fact he’s quite mad. Possibly crazier than some of the people he’s experimenting on, and they’re very crazy and very dangerous indeed. And at least two of his patients are living in his house, but they’ve been cured by the professor. At least the professor believes he’s cured them.

We can foresee some of the mayhem that is going to follow but writer Brian Clemens has a few tricks up his sleeve.

If ever an actor was born to play a mad scientist it was Patrick Magee. And he’s in splendid form. He gets great support from Don Henderson as his butler Boz and Max Wall as another of his servants - both characters who may or may not turn out to be sinister but both are distinctly disturbing. Joanna Pettet, an actress whose career was already on the downslide, adds some glamour and makes an adequate endangered heroine.

A Killer in Every Corner is fairly typical of this series - nicely dark and twisted and very well executed. Worth it for Patrick Magee’s performance.

Where the Action Is was the final episode of the fourth season. This particular episode went to air in 1975.

Gambler Eddie Valence (Edd Byrnes) has just lost a lot of money at the roulette tables when he meets Ilse (Ingrid Pitt). If he’d won he’d have been suspicious about a beautiful woman inviting him to her hotel room but since he lost he figures he’s safe - no-one is going to rob him of his winnings since he doesn’t have any. 

Nonetheless he should have been suspicious. He is drugged and he wakes up in the country house of ‘Daddy’ Burns (James Berwick). Burns is a gambler as well. He likes to play for very high stakes. The highest stakes of all. And he never loses. Eddie is going to have to do some serious gambling and if he can’t figure out a way to win he is not going to be leaving alive.

Refusing to play is not an option. Burns’ country house is a fortress, or more accurately perhaps a prison, and escape is impossible.

The episode works because the gambling isn’t just the background to the story - absolutely everything in this tale hinges on gambling of one sort or another.

The plot twists are not going to come as great surprises. They have all been used before. Brian Clemens does however fit them together with a fair amount of skill.

It’s really the acting that carries the episode. Edd Byrnes makes a convincingly cool professional gambler. James Berwick as Burns is suitably obsessive and gleefully malevolent. Ingrid Pitt is glamorous and deliciously treacherous.

Nurse Will Make It Better, A Killer in Every Corner and Where the Action Is are among the most entertaining of the entire series. Screamer has its problems but it’s still worth a look.

 I’ve reviewed the third episode (Night Is the Time for Killing AKA Murder on the Midnight Express) separately elsewhere.