Thriller: Killer With Two Faces
I have thought long and hard what to say about this programme. Unusually I have watched it four times with an eye to a blog post and am interested to note that on each viewing I have had a different blog post in mind and a rather different opinion.
In fact I have never got on very well with anthology series Thriller (1973 to 6). Since it’s very popular and has had showings and commercial releases to great acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, I think this is probably actually me. I don’t tend to get on well with anthology series anyway, and in this one the episodes are broadly thrillers but tend to vary quite a lot. It is famous in Britain for being largely made with an eye to the American market, with an inclusion of an American actor in most episodes. I don’t know whether this idea British TV had in the sixties and seventies that Americans would only watch a series if it had a token American actor was actually based in reality in any way, but it seems very odd when I say it like that.
The premise of Killer with Two Faces is that killer Terry Spelling (played by our old friend Ian Hendry) escapes from his Asylum for the Criminally Insane by decking the doctor. It transpires that the particular killings he does tend to revolve around killing women who he considers perfect, before they do something to spoil the perfection. Not always, because he does also murder an estate agent who recognises him. The plot is heavily dependent on the fact that he is actually an identical twin, and is confused for his twin brother who is an architect.
My first viewing rather focused on the fact that Hendry really doesn’t seem very well, in my opinion. Always one to show off the chest hair, at the beginning of the episode he is having a physical from the doctor and tells the doctor what superb physical shape he is in. I don’t know whether this was deliberately set up to make him seem rather deranged, and I know you’re going to say it’s rich coming from me when I can’t keep a shirt on, but I don’t go around saying what a magnificent specimen of manhood I am. The unfortunate reality was that neither was Hendry at this point and he is quite obviously sucking in his gut. Like I say, Of course given the character’s obsession with perfection this establishes that his ideas of perfection are decidedly skewed.
We are all familiar with the story of Hendry’s tragic alcoholism, driven partly by the death of one of his wives, which messed up his career and no doubt caused all sorts of other trouble in his life. He looks older than his age of 40ish here, frankly rather ill, and it looks like the drink was taking its toll at this point. I found the quote which illustrates this post, which is an example of delusional addiction thinking if ever there was one, given that according to internet rumour he was drinking brandy by the half pint when he appeared in The Sweeney.
My second viewing made me think that I probably could only manage a very short blog post, which would perhaps be overly critical. In fact most of the reviews online are a bit mixed, so unusually I am in agreement with most of the people who leave reviews on the internet. I don’t want to be over-critical, but there are a few very valid criticisms of this episode. The main one for me is that we are expected to believe that twin brother, presumably in their thirties or forties, and one of who is ‘criminally insane’ both have the same haircut and the same suit. Yes, the entire point of the episode is the confusion between the two brothers, but having Hendry look the same through the whole episode just isn’t credible. What they could have done was get him a haircut that could be subtly altered, say parted differently, so that he could still be the same person looking a bit different.
The other main problem for me is that we see the two brothers together, briefly using a body double, but it is frankly incredible that they didn’t use chromakey so that we would actually see them properly together, talking to each other. I genuinely can’t understand why you wouldn’t do this.
My third viewing made me appreciate the depiction of Spelling’s (probably) personality disorder. I don’t mean this by the way the killings are depicted but in the rather push-me-pull-you relationship the character has with his ex. He kills all the women we see in the episode who he considers perfect, but doesn’t kill his ex, who is very far from perfect. She won’t keep away from him, even when asked, yet he still lets her in when she arrives after he’s removed the hidden key so that she can’t let him in. It’s exactly the sort of relationship with someone similar that you can easily fall into if your own life is chaotic enough, and perfectly depicted here.
My fourth viewing made me rather suspicious of the architect brother (this is in no way implied in the programme and is genuinely me reading too much into it). When he meets Patty on a train he talks about her in a way which is really quite pervy, describing her as if she is a house, and I’m not happy that of the twin brothers one would end up in an asylum for the Criminally Insane and the other would end up perfectly adjusted. If it weren’t for the fact that the two brothers are differentiated by a mole on the arm of one of them, I would be saying that actually it is possible the episode ends with the brothers the wrong way round, and the fate of the killer actually happens to the architect so that the killer lives to kill on. I’m not very happy with two adult twin brothers, one of whom is a criminal, both having the same haircut and clothes, and feel that that would suggest they are definitely enmeshed in a way which wouldn’t reflect well on the atchitect’s own mental health.
Viewing this episode multiple times has actually helped me notice a few details that aren’t in any of the reviews online.There is one very sinister scene where the female lead Patty, played by Donna Mills, is taken by Spelling to a house designed by his brother, which he pretends he designed himself. WHat is sinister is that she goes upstairs to repair her torn skirt, the owner of the house returns, tells her that she is trespassing and is in his wife’s bedroom and he locks her in, turning a key on the outside of the door. His wife’s bedroom has a key all ready in the outside of the door and this is so chilling when you think about it.
To my delight the detective who is pursuing the escaped Spelling is played by Roddy McMillan. He has appeared on this blog before as the hugely cynical private detective of The View from Daniel Pike, and his dour, underplayed Scots deadpan delivery is the perfect foil for the amount of drama going on in the episode.
In all this has proved an unexpectedly fruitful episode of a show which I have never got on very well with, and one I would recommend despite mixed reviews.
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