Thriller: Incredible Doktor Markesan VHS

I recently ordered three of these tapes from Amazon.com and I'm not disappointed. This one has great atmosphere, Boris steals the show of course. Dick York is great too. Nice shock ending. The subject matter was very uncommon for early 60s television, a rare living dead story. Ooops, don't want to give away the ending! Classic TV horror, one of the best. Pleasant screams!

I think I saw all this type of movies when I was a kid and remembering it I ordered from Amazon.com.

Simply an excellent episode of Thriller. Boris Karloff is one of the best actors to ever step in front of a camera.

This is the E. A. Poe story with a twist. I liked it alot, had me guessing what would happen next. Clever pop-open coffin setup. The specter's face was very effective. Well done twist to a classic Poe story.

True fans of Horror who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s love this show. Even Stephen King, in his book DANSE MACABRE (p. 216 of the oversized paperback), calls this "the best horror series ever put on TV." The show's host, Boris Karloff, is obviously no stranger to the horror genre, and he co-stars in this particular episode, "The Premature Burial."With only a vague resemblance to the Poe story of the same name, this story concerns a man who suffers from catalepsy and consequently becomes obsessed with ensuring that he is never buried alive during a seizure. But unbenknownst to him, his cuckolding young wife has other plans. Karloff appears as a medical doctor who is good friends with the cataleptic gentleman and who eventually uncovers the truth about the wife's sinister doings. All in all, it's an entertaining little horror story with an interesting and suspenseful climax.

The Incredible Dr. Markesan is one of the finest episodes of a remarkable TV series (Thriller), and stylistically harks back to the days of classic horror movies of the thirties. Indeed, it was directed by Robert Florey, who was slated to direct the original Frankenstein (1931), till replaced by James Whale, who was ultimately responsible for casting Boris Karloff as the monster. Ironically, thirty years afterwards, Karloff and Florey at last got a chance to work together, and the result is a small masterpiece of horror.The story concerns a couple who take refuge in the house of an elderly scientist who is related to the husband (an uncle maybe,--can't recall), who permits them to stay in his house, which is in fact a creepy, cobwebbed old mansion, provided that they never leave! As things develop, the couple does leave, and worse, they discover the diabolical nature of Dr. Markesan's experiments, which have to do with literally raising the dead. It's a strange, simple story, brilliantly told, featuring a small cast, with fine performances all-round, especially Karloff's as the eponymous doctor.Technically it's on a par with most feature films, as it feels more like a movie than a TV show. The atmosphere is palpably oppressive, and the "undead" the doctor gathers in his library each night are gruesome to behold. This is a grand, almost painfully suspenseful old-fashioned blood-and-thunder horror yarn, gothic in the extreme, and filmed in glorious black and white. For fans of such things it's a must-see. In my opinion it's an as yet unheralded classic that deserves wider recognition.

True fans of Horror who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s love this show. Even Stephen King, in his book DANSE MACABRE (p. 216 of the oversized paperback), calls this "the best horror series ever put on TV." The show's host, Boris Karloff, was obviously no stranger to the genre, and he even starred in several notable episodes.This episode, "The Terror in Teakwood," tells the story of a pianist and composer who is obsessed with proving to the public that he can best his late rival. He is eventually able to perform his rival's most difficult pieces, but only when wearing the severed hands of the deceased rival like a pair of gloves. Of course, such gruesome acts ultimately lead to the jealous pianist's demise....This is a particularly eerie and morbid episode, so fans of the genre should definitly find here those chills they seek. Also worth noting is that the episode was directed by Paul Henreid, who is well known to fans of classic cinema as the actor who played Victor Laszlo in 1942's CASABLANCA.

"The Terror in Teakwood" is a typical horror installment of "Thriller" in every regard. The horrific and supernatural elements are presented in a matter-of-fact, Jacques-Tourneur fashion, with the primary emphasis placed on telling a good story. Such an approach renders the frightening moments all the more frightening. Whatever happened to this approach?The story is an imaginative variation on "The Hands of Orlac," with a dangerously obsessed pianist stealing the hands of his dead rival from the graveyard. The pianist is played by none other than Guy Rolfe of William Castle's 1961 "Mr. Sardonicus." Not the scariest "Thriller" episode, by any means, but scary enough.