JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 193 из 359It was a period before television began to face up to an increasing barrage of criticism about its depiction of violence, a barrage that really began withthe JFK assassination, grew heavier following the assassinations of RFK and Martin Luther King, and finally caused the medium to dissolve into a sticky syrup of situation comedies-history may record that dramatic television finally gave up the ghost and slid down the tubes with a hearty cry of "Na-noo, na-noo!” The contemporaries of Thriller were also weekly bloodbaths; it was the time of The Untouchables , starring Robert Stack as the unflappable Eliot Ness and featuring the gruesome deaths of hoodlums without number (1959-1963) ; Peter Gunn (1958-1961) ; and Cain's Hundred (1961-1962), to name just a few. It was TV's violent era. As a result, after a slow first thirteen weeks, Thriller was able to become something more than the stock imitation of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that it was apparently meant to be (early episodes dealt with cheating husbands trying to hypnotize their wives into walking over high cliffs, poisoning Aunt Martha to inherit her fortune so that the gambling debts could be paid off, and all that tiresome sort of thing) and took on a tenebrous life of its own. For the brief period of its run between January of 1961 and April of 1962-perhaps fifty-six of its seventy-eight total episodes-it really was one of a kind, and its like was never seen on TV again.
Thriller was an anthology-format show (as all of the supernaturalterror TV programs which have enjoyed even a modicum of success have been) hosted by Boris Karloff. Karloff had appeared on TV before, shortly after the Universal horror wave of the early to mid-thirties finally ran weakly out in that series of comedies in the late forties. This earlier program, telecast on the fledgling ABC-TV network, had a brief run in the autumn of 1949. It was originally titled Starring Boris Karloff , fared no better following a title change to Mystery Playhouse Starring Boris Karloff , and was canceled. In feeling and tone, however, it was startlingly similar to Thriller, which came along eleven years later. Here is the summary of one plot from Starring Boris Karloff ; it might as well be a Thriller episode: An English hangman unduly enjoys his work, which brings him payment of five guineas per hanging. He revels in the snap of the victim's neck, and the dangling arms. When his pregnant wife discovers his true occupation she leaves him. Twenty years later the hangman is called upon to execute a young man, which he does with pleasure, despite the fact that he has secret evidence (of the youth's innocence) . . . . Only then is he confronted by his ex-wife, who tells him he has just hung his own son.
Thriller was an anthology-format show (as all of the supernaturalterror TV programs which have enjoyed even a modicum of success have been) hosted by Boris Karloff. Karloff had appeared on TV before, shortly after the Universal horror wave of the early to mid-thirties finally ran weakly out in that series of comedies in the late forties. This earlier program, telecast on the fledgling ABC-TV network, had a brief run in the autumn of 1949. It was originally titled Starring Boris Karloff , fared no better following a title change to Mystery Playhouse Starring Boris Karloff , and was canceled. In feeling and tone, however, it was startlingly similar to Thriller, which came along eleven years later. Here is the summary of one plot from Starring Boris Karloff ; it might as well be a Thriller episode: An English hangman unduly enjoys his work, which brings him payment of five guineas per hanging. He revels in the snap of the victim's neck, and the dangling arms. When his pregnant wife discovers his true occupation she leaves him. Twenty years later the hangman is called upon to execute a young man, which he does with pleasure, despite the fact that he has secret evidence (of the youth's innocence) . . . . Only then is he confronted by his ex-wife, who tells him he has just hung his own son.