What Beckoning Ghost?

It's long overdue that I started writing about Boris Karloff's "Thriller." Season 2, Episode 1 is particularly good. And what follows is why.

It's never a good idea to plot, scheme or otherwise endeavor to orchestrate the death of someone; nor is it advised to fake a premonition, haunting, or, in other words, to try and taunt the ghosts to come and harrow the living. No, that sort of karmic imbalance-making will make for a karmic imbalance. (But we repeat ourselves.)

In Boris Karloff's "Thriller" Episode 1, Season 2: "What Beckoning Ghost?" we have an example of this particular mischief indulged in at the expense of the heart-troubled Mildred (Judith Evelyn), a bedridden woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, who is cared for by husband Eric and sister Lydia--whom we at first take to be a simple nurse, maybe even a loyal servant.

Mildred is served her breakfast in bed; her late-night dishes are served up, seemingly, by supernatural forces--hearing the spookshow strains of an unseen piano-player, she emerges from her bedridden zombiedom to see a vision of herself.

(It's said Lincoln and even Mark Twain had similar nocturnal, psychic interludes. But we digress.)

The vision? Herself laid out in a coffin.

"The nights around these parts are lonely, and a bell tolls on and on."

Husband Eric (Tom Helmore), who has a quality about him as if he were an old silent star gone to seed in 1961, tries to convince her that her vision is all in her mind. Very well. And a salient plot point, we might add.

Boris has already introduced us to this little domestic drama of the dearly departed thusly:

Imagine entering a room, discovering your own coffin, and a wreathe inscribed, 'To my dear wife, rest in peace.' Now then, would you believe your eyes, or would you think that you'd actually caught some glimpse into the future? Or perhaps you might suspect some grisly plot against your own sanity? Now please, no snap judgments! You might be right. And then there'd be no need for you to suffer through the terrifying ordeal as time runs out.

Sister Lydia (Adele Mara) is a little more than what meets the eye--some people are just born bad. Let you in on a secret: her and brother-in-law Eric are having an affair. Lydia has a convincing rubber mask of sister Mildred, and she puts it to diabolical use.

It is not much more time that Sister Mildred has--she ends up shoveled away in a nook in a cold, hard marble mausoleum. It seems as if that would be the end of the affair (haha). But of course, as noted above, the karmic backswing of such dabbling is more than enough to bring doom, despair, and the inexorable "fall of the house of Usher." Figuratively speaking.

We have to be forgiven here, and give warning, for possibly giving away the "spoilers" (a nasty word that suggest rot, decay, and, at the very least, suspect intentions).

Eric begins to come apart a little at the seams. Like Lady Macbeth, one supposes, except he doesn't indulge in nocturnal washing. He does vide the crypt of wifey-poo, laid in her cold, funk-stinking (how's that for a mental image) drawer, with his name lovingly etched beneath hers. Except now, his DOD (Date of Departure) has been filled in. And he knows, baby. HE JUST KNOWS.

Over a cheery breakfast, he announces to lover Lydia that he's doomed to die that day. She puffs a cigarette and intimates that maybe he needs to take some time off. Both hear the playing of a piano, which no fingers have ever touched. No earthly fingers, that is.

We are treated to a scene in the short telefilm wherein the viewer becomes the phantom invader. It's as if the viewer is him or herself now the ghost being addressed directly. "I see you there..." he intones as WE become the "beckoning ghost."

And then, predictably, a plunge from the window.

And the insanity, the spectral revenge, just continues to play out, like the strains of an old organ, intoning dismally in an empty room.

You reap what you sow. Even on a television show.

Directed by Ida Lupino, from a pulp magazine story by Harold Lawlor.

Boris Karloff Thriller Series- What Beckoning Ghost

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