User Reviews

Elisha Cook Jr. plays a disturbed man who threatens the life of a political candidate by phone, then tells the newspapers, who make it front page headlines, bringing on the attentions of police Lt. Brian Rome(played by Robert Lansing) who discovers the true identity of the would-be-assassin, who is killed in a street accident, but not before informing Rome that he planted a bomb in the purse of an unsuspecting woman in the elevator, and now it is a race against time to find that woman, and destroy the bomb before it goes off. Good cast here, who do their best to bring oddly structured story to life with mostly successful results.

Producer Maxwell Shane debuted with this outstanding entry featuring the always dependable yet underrated Robert Lansing as a police lieutenant searching the city for a time bomb set to go off at 11 pm. Calling on Mayoral candidate Conrad Nagel, who dismisses a recent death threat as a crank, Lansing discovers the vengeful bomber (Elisha Cook Jr.) fleeing the building before a fatal hit-and-run forces a dying confession: while on the elevator, he had planted the device in the handbag of an unsuspecting young woman (Whitney Blake), and the lieutenant only has five hours to locate her. 23 year old Mary Tyler Moore, making a brief appearance as a librarian who also happened to be on the elevator, would have a more substantial role in episode 64, "Man of Mystery," while two veterans of the Roger Corman school of low budget filmmaking, Antony Carbone and Ed Nelson (making his first of many THRILLER roles), are among the cops. Lovely Whitney Blake, best remembered for the 60s sitcom HAZEL, was one of the creators of the 70s sitcom ONE DAY AT A TIME, and was the mother of actress Meredith Baxter. The on screen title is indeed "The Fatal Impulse," but our host, Boris Karloff, inadvertently refers to it as simply "The Impulse."

The Fatal Impulse is an early, often maligned non-horror entry in the Thriller anthology series, and having seen it twice I found it effective for what it is,--a race against time to discover a bomb planted by a madman--which, while neither brilliantly written or plotted satisfies in its incidentals, such as the acting, notably by leading man Robert Lansing; the deliberate pace, urgent but not rushed, courtesy of director Gerald Mayer; and above all the mood, which conveys a a certain aspect of its time (1960) with spot on accuracy.

This Cold War was a literally hot button issue back then, as was the atom bomb. A bomb figures in the story (the Russians don't, as this is a local problem, a domestic issue). Still, madmen are madmen, and there's plenty of tension in the story. Lansing was the right man to play the lead, as there was always a near gloomy, no-nonsense quality to him. Moreover, there seems to be a dark cloud that hangs over the episode that comes from outside the story itself, which lends it an air of spooky nostalgia (for those of us who remember the era in which it was made).

Those were, for America, sweet days, and yet it wasn't all backyard cookouts and hula hoops, with Prince Charming JFK right around the corner. There was darkness, too (does it ever go away completely?), and The Fatal Impulse captures this aspect of its era to near perfection. The contemporaneous Twilight Zone was another TV series of the period that "didn't mince words" as to what was really going on just beneath the surface in the America of that time.

If I seem to rate this basically journeyman episode a bit higher than, on purely aesthetic grounds, I should, it's because of its channeling of a certain darkness in America that was not unlike the ticking time bomb at the center of the story, and tragically for us could perhaps not have been defused, whether or not there had been a presidential assassination or a war in Southeast Asia.

When the television show "Thriller" began, it was a rather dull show despite being hosted by Boris Karloff. Fortunately, later in the series the shows began to explore topics like the supernatural--more like "The Outer Limits" or "The Twilight Zone". Unfortunately, the earlier shows mostly seemed like detective stories--and they were generally a boring lot. "The Fatal Impulse" is one such early episode.

The show begins with a nut-case (Elisha Cook) making some threats to blow up a guy running for political office. The cops take this very seriously and nearly catch the guy--though he manages to elude them-- only to run right into the path of a vehicle. He's killed but is able to tell the police a bit about where he planted it. Unfortunately, it's in a lady's bag and the exact person is unknown. So Lieutenant Rome (Robert Lansing) really has his work cut out for him.

This isn't a show--just one that is like a cop show. And, as a cop show and not a scary show, it's worth seeing. The acting is very good (Lansing was an underrated actor). Just don't expect monsters, parallel universes and the like!

By the way, look close at the 38 minute mark and you'll be able to see Mary Tyler Moore just before she became famous with "The Dick Van Dyke Show".

There isn't anything terrible about this episode. It's a story of the police trying to find a bomb before it blows up and kills a woman and those around her. There is a tiny bit of tension with the usual McGuffin (Hitchcock's audience knowledge thing), but it slides along at a slow pace. It also introduces a romantic element that is out of place in such a serious situation. Elisha Cook, who always played the outcast, plants the bomb and then gets killed. They know he placed it in the bag of a girl on the elevator. The problem here is that this is just pedestrian (if that) fare for a cheap crime drama, even of that era. Thriller, the anthology series, is throwing away opportunities to do something unique, banking on good writing. It was interesting to see Mary Tyler Moore in a twenty second scene. She gets chewed out by the detectives. Really good cast. Very little delivery.