Old-School TV: Boris Karloff's Thriller- 'The Purple Room'

I don't want to talk about The Tick ending.
I don't want to talk about Swamp Thing ending.

I know- I'll go back and do a different Show!  Good job, me!

As a reminder, Thriller was a Horror TV Show with Boris Karloff.  He'd appear at the beginning like all of the Hosts and then vanish like the wind.  He didn't milk it for all it was worth like some other Narrators!

I kid, I kid.  Here's...

The Show actually opens with a woman talking to someone off-screen, firing a gun and screaming.

Karloff appears as the Main Stars walk by.  This is a tale of ghostly revenge and intrigue.  Wait- this is also in B&W.

How do I know for sure if the Room even is purple?!?

A man is told that he has to spend one night in a House to claim it.  He's not happy about it.

Holy shit- Rip Torn!  This is not going to be a sedate performance!

Oh and the guy reading the Will is Alfred from Batman.  

That's not even the weirdest cameo here.

To convince Rip about the seriousness, they tell a version of the Story we saw the end of at the beginning.  Time and space are warped!

Rip, naturally, doesn't buy it and waves a gun around.  

So...just being himself then?

He does his best to resist their 'tricks,' but is then confronted by a Monster!  Damn 1960- you freaky!

Plot Twist #1: That was actually them.  They switched out his bullets with blanks.
If you're wondering how and when they got blanks, that's a good question.

Plot Twist #2: He seemingly dies from a Heart Attack, but comes back and is shot.  Hey- it's like that story!

Before this can go for Shyamalan on us, the Cops show up and their arrests seem imminent.  The End.

A solid Episode, even if the big turns were kind of obvious.  If you have no real surprises, having someone call them out in advance doesn't make it better.  He thinks that it is all a set-up...and it is.  I was hoping for something more, but it never came.  That said, the whole thing is done really well.  Torn delivers a properly-unhinged performance.  All of the other Players- like Napier- do there's quite well too.  The fact that the whole thing is wrapped around the same events happening- in fantasy and then reality- makes it a bit easy to stay ahead of.  

I do have to give props to, well, the Props Department.  They reused a mask from a Film made a few years earlier to create a truly-inspired 'creature' to frighten Torn's Character.  They didn't make it, but they had the presence of mind to use it.  

All in all, it is good, but it could have been great.  Speaking of great, though, I think you might recognize the Film that this House is from...

A good Episode, but lacking any twists that were telegraphed way in advance.  Good use of freaky imagery and Props though.