User Reviews

All in all, I didn't find this episode to be very satisfying. The Watcher himself (Martin Gabel) was a creepy enough guy, but apart from his somewhat overly zealous bent, we never really get to understand why he's compelled to kill young adults in the summer resort town where he lives. After an opening scene where he's shown drowning a teenage girl in a pond, he sets his sights on Bess Pettit (Olive Sturgess) and her boyfriend Larry (Richard Chamberlain), marking them as his next victims if they don't come around to his stern philosophy. As an aside, after hearing the sheriff's explanation of how good a swimmer the first victim was, I'm wondering now why she didn't just swim away. It didn't strike me that Freitag the Watcher was in any kind of shape to jump in after her.

There was another head scratcher as well. When Sheriff Archer (Alan Baxter) comes upon the family that heard Bess's screams, it's daylight. However by the time he drives up the hill to where her car was parked, a mere few hundred yards, the police car's headlights are on and it's dark out!

Fans of the popular Richard Chamberlain will certainly be happy to see him in this entry, one of a handful of early TV screen roles that led up to his star billing as Dr. Kildare of the early 1960's. His role here isn't really anything to write home about, but he spends a good deal of time in a pair of swim trunks that's bound to flutter a few hearts of women who read 'Teen Beat' and '16' back in the day.

Considering the suspense the story was building, I was left rather perplexed by the abrupt ending. As villain Feitag attacks Bess in Larry's room, she beans him with a pitcher, and there seems to be an awful long pause before he falls out the window. That seemed as awkward as Larry's jumping out of bed to help his girl, but then we don't get to see him again. Funny how I saw this episode about a year ago, forgot all about it, and now find I have the exact same reaction to it as I had the first time.

***SPOILER*** A pre-Doctor Kildare Richard Chamberlain as Larry Carter the handsomest if not only boy at this out of the way summer resort is the target of this crazed religious fanatic Mr. Frietag, Martain Gabel, a high school teacher from Portland Oregon. Frietag feels that any couple who's involved in even necking or smooching before marriage are in violation, as he sees it, of biblical religious law. And whoever commits that serious offense must pay the price with their lives; Which he's more then willing to take.

Larry has been secretly dating Bess Petti, Olive Sturges, and Frietag who's spending the summer at the resort has taken notice of that. As we've seen at the beginning of the "Thriller" episode Frietag had already murdered a young woman for fooling around with boys and now has his eye on Bess and Larry as being his next victims. Always following, like a bloodhound, on foot and by car and watching the happy couple being in love with each other just drives Frietag off the deep end mentally. He even goes so far as to send a typed and unsigned note to the town's Sheriff Al Matthews, James Westerfield, of his intentions to commit murder. And when the time presents itself to Frietag in catching both Larry & Bess alone, in in the case of Larry with his back turned, he goes or springs into action.

****SPOILERS*** Worth watching mostly for the incredibly control freak performance of a lifetime by actor Martin Gabel as the religiously deranged and what seems like sex obsessed Mr. Frietag. The guy Martin Gabel seemed to be possessed by an evil spirit in how he played the part of a religious nut case that for a moment I didn't think he was acting but was in fact the real thing! Frietag did in fact have a lot of support from the people at the summer resort who seems to be as hung up in feeling that young people, like Bess & Larry, being in love was evil just like he did. which included Bess' parents and Larry's aunt Unis Appleby, Claire Carleton, who actually liked the guy!

While this is somewhat satisfying in a kind of "I hope he gets his" sort of way, the roots of the dysfunction are ignored by the abrupt ending. This is the typical Sixties kids against the world presentation. Richard Chamberlain is courting the bobby-soxer daughter of a local socialite. Because Chamberlain's character is only twenty and a mere high school graduate (who looks good in a t-shirt), he isn't the ideal mate for the young woman. She is rebellious thing but still clings to family. The danger comes from a religious zealot who lives across the street from the young guy. He is a Bible spouting nut who sees his role as eliminating evil. Unfortunately, Chamberlain's aunt, with whom he stays, is darn near as nutty, in a more conventional way. She sings hymns and pontificates how the world should be. The problem with this episode is that those who are primary causes of these rifts never see the error of their ways. Also, we are treated to some incredibly idiotic events. Chamberlain is struck on the head with a tire wrench and nearly crushed by a lift in a garage. Unconscious, he is brought home and is to be picked up by an ambulance the next day. Really. Oh well. These episodes were only about fifty minutes long.

Moody and slow moving, this "Thriller" episode is alternately disturbing and boring. It reminds me of something that William Inge might have written, dealing with the star crossed romance of Olive Sturgess and Richard Chamberlain, a relationship that pretty much everybody in this judgmental small-town seems to object to. There's her mother, Irene Hervey, and his guardian, Claire Carleton, not really having any motives other than the fact that he's an orphan and the presumption that she's a tramp. They are stalked by Martin Gabel, a creepy looking old letch, but he has no real motive other than the presumption that he too is morally judging them which puts their lives in in jeopardy. While there is some tension in this episode, those moments are few and far between, making this episode a bitter disappointment. Veteran actor Stuart Erwin is completely wasted in a thankless role, there simply to show that there is one decent older person in the town that doesn't judge their relationship.