User Reviews

***SPOILERS*** It's the drop dead gorgeous Elizabeth Taylor look alike, but much prettier, Myrna Fahey who's newlywed Alice Page the "Girl with a Secret" in this "Thriller" episode. It's Alice who finds out that her husband of one week Tony, Rhodes Reason, is not the person that he's cracked up to be. Alaways telling Alice that he's going out on business trips to places like New York St. Louis and Minneapolis Tony is really a secret government agent on the trail of a Soviet spy ring headed by the effete refined and well bead as well as fed Englishman Carolik, Victor Buono.

It's at the airport that Alice started to suspect that her husband Tony was up to something sinister. That's when she caught Tony switching suitcases with a stranger there. This lead to Alice finding out that Tony works as a secret agent for the US Government but in her arguing with him about it the nosy maid Mrs. Peele, Ellen Corby, at the Page Mansion overheard the conversation which included that Tony next trip was not to Minneapolis but Mexico City!

It's that information that can led to Tony almost getting killed by Carolik's top goon and hit man "Evil Face" Bluecher,Rax Holman, who earlier tried unsuccessfully to run both Tony & Alice off the road and off a cliff to their deaths! With Alice paying off Mrs. Peele with the Page's family jewels to shut up only leads to both her getting fired from her job and later getting murdered by "Evil Face" who thought that she knew what Tony was up to, but really didn't, by him pushing her down a flight of stairs to her death.

***SPOILERS***It's later when both Alice & Tony thought that the coast was clear the spy ring member including "Evil Face" tracked the two down at a local pharmacy and planned to whack them before they, or Tony, got back to his boss in D.C with the information exposing them. The big mistake that they made was completely overlooking the meek elderly and harmless looking counterman who looked like he couldn't hurt a fly but in fact ended up putting them out of business!

This episode of 'Thriller' takes a stab at being an espionage story before it winds up with a murder on it's hands. The crime isn't the kind that needs to be solved, we see maniacal Rex Holman rough up Ellen Corby before she takes a tumble down the stairs, as suspicion falls on the 'Girl With a Secret', newlywed Alice Page (Myrna Fahy). It turns out her husband Tony (Rhodes Reason) is a government agent doing undercover work to expose some kind of criminal kingpin played by Victor Buono.

The story begins with a pretty good set-up as a suitcase switcheroo puts Alice on her guard; later we see Tony open the case nonchalantly to get his next set of instructions. The plot thickens when she finds airline tickets to Mexico and forces Tony to spill the beans. The rest of the story Alice has to fend off a domino-like string of consequences that put her on the defensive. Except for Tony's brief explanation about his work involving nuclear secrets, we never do get a clear sense of what's going on with Buono's bunch, other than his desire to put Tony away.

In probably one of the more contrived endings of a Thriller episode, the druggist goes commando with an old pistol and saves the day when the Page's are confronted at the local pharmacy. I thought about that for a while, and the way it seemed to me, that loaded gun was just lying around for twenty years and managed to fire off a round with no problem at all. I don't know that much about firearms, but that sounded like a stretch to me, as did most of the story attempting to be a Thriller.

Newleyeds Rhodes Reason and Myrna Fahey are being stalked by the sinister Rex Holman, the creepiest villain since Richard Widmark in "Kiss of Death". In fact, this noir like episode of "Thriller" has a scene very close to Widmark's infamous stair murder, here involving blackmailing maid Ellen Corby who finds out facts about Reason and pays for her scheming. Reason, it turns out, works for a government agency that prevents secrets from getting into enemy hands, quite different than what his eccentric family thing he does. They include matriarch grandmother Fay Bainter, Paul Hartman, Anne Seymour and a young Cloris Leachman. While not involved really in the main plot, they are quite sinister in their own way, with Seymour the worst of the lot, wanting to slip Fahey sodium pentathol to get information out of her. Only Bainter seems to have any sense of morality, although Leachman expresses regret for her part on everything, referring to the family as half dead.

There's also Victor Buono as the sinister leader of the espionage racket, giving creepy Holman his orders. That hideous grin is one you'll never forget, like it has been permanently plastered there. Great writing and acting, with superb direction by veteran director Mitchell Leiden. It's not really a complicated plotline, but it's been done so well that it seems a lot more complicated and sophisticated than it really is. Corby's blackmailing maid may not really deserve her fate, but she's excellent at making you despise her. Veteran actress Esther Dale is completely wasted as another maid, appearing briefly and then completely disappearing.