Angoisses The Next Victim (1973–1976) Online

This is an episode of "Thriller" from its sixth and final season. By this time the show was displaying signs of fatigue and it comes through in the uneven quality of this installment. All the same it is good fare and rather better than initial impressions might suggest.

Sandy Marshall is an American woman married to a successful British insurance agent. She is also confined to a wheelchair after a terrible accident in which her new sports car crashed. A heatwave has hit Britain but she is less than delighted. She cannot get out of her flat and her husband has gone away on business, leaving her alone. A number of local women have been strangled and she is very anxious. She tries to reassure herself but without success. Her friend Betty offers support and promises to meet her for a drink. However Betty never arrives and Sandy fears the worst. A visit from a personable neighbour, Tom, seems to offer protection - or does it?

The story premise above promises a very gripping tale but doesn't quite deliver. Essentially it is a "whodunit", not unlike the earlier "If It's a Man, Hang Up!" but lacks the latter's quality, never quite seizing the imagination. However there is much more there than might first be apparent. The final part of the story, mostly occupied by Sandy and Tom, is very good as both characters slowly lose their composure while the police finally feel they have their man. The conclusion is quite clever and delivers a fine twist which within a stronger episode would have been even more satisfying. It is spoiled a little though by a strange final shot which doesn't really wrap up events properly.

Characters and acting performances are quite good without reaching any heights. Tom Packer, well conveyed by Max Mason, is probably most interesting as Sandy's neighbour. Tom appears very friendly but there is more to him than meets the eye. He is capable of great perception, offering some powerful, if discomforting insights on her accident. His mother was confined to a wheelchair and this provides a bond between him and Sandy. However it does make him anxious and at times disturbing.

Bartlett, the caretaker (or janitor as he is referred to throughout in deference to the Americans!), is very intriguing and an obvious suspect. Not only is he lazy, not attending to problems in the building, but he has a disturbing fixation on mothers and babies, covering his office with pictures of them cut from magazines. A very creepy character very well-acted by Ronald Lacey. This role isn't dissimilar to the suspect caretaker in "If It's a Man" but is a rather more sinister figure.

TP McKenna, who appeared in the very first outing of "Thriller" returned, this time as the detective Frampton. The show almost always portrayed detectives in eccentric, somewhat ambiguous, lights and this is no exception. Frampton seems happy to let his assistant do almost all the work while he lounges around, scoffing at the "police college" theories offered. However he does hit on some smart insights. Not memorable but still interesting - like the story in general.

Carroll Baker as Sandy must have been one of the biggest American names to star in the show. She does a good job as the vulnerable and anxious Sandy. However she doesn't convey the same warmth and therefore inspire the same feeling as other "Thriller" "damsels-in-distress". Brenda Cavendish, best known for her part as Nell in the fifth series of "Public Eye", does well as Sandy's friend Betty.

The direction (by James Ormerod) and music are well up to the usual high standard. Altogether a capable if not outstanding outing which might have been more successful with better casting and a little improvement in the writing. Omitting the dreadfully wooden news reports would certainly have helped!

This seventies reincarnation of the classic Thriller series for British television created a few gems, and more than a few fillers. This Brian Clemens scripted psychological thriller has quite a few red herrings (that is expected of the genre), but has a thoroughly satisfying ending, in which two entirely different plot arcs verge nicely. Carroll Baker is the one to watch, still elegant though bound to a wheelchair. Ronald Lacey is the creepy apartment repairman who may or may not be harboring secrets. I believe this is only available Stateside through an OOP Thriller Video.

'The Next Victim' was the second episode of Thriller's final series and thankfully is an improvement on the lackluster opener 'Sleepwalker'.

Set during an intense heatwave (summer of 1976 - although transmitted in April) the action centres upon an apartment book where Sandy and Derek Marshall reside. Sandy (played by the striking Carroll Baker) is temporarily confined to a wheelchair following an horrific car accident while Derek is a high profile businessman who specialises in the insurance industry.

Against this backdrop is a serial strangler whom we see ending the lives of a number of unfortunate ladies. To complete the sense of unease, the janitor in the Marshall's building is the disturbing Bartlett who comes complete with a mother and baby fixation.

Derek is called away one bank holiday to a meeting with a Lebonese client while Sandy is left alone in the apartment. She invites a neighbour, Betty, down for a drink but when the latter fails to show, Sandy becomes anxious and fears the worst. Help seems to be at hand when kindly tenant, Tom Packer steps in....

Similar in plot to 'I'm The Girl He Wants To Kill', 'The Next Victim' is sadly not in the same league. There are some decent scenes and TP McKenna's Frampton is enjoyable to watch. The final quarter is very tense as Sandy realises the danger she is in. However the closing scene is somewhat perplexing and feels somewhat unfinished.

This might be called a low budget psychological thriller; low budget it is for sure, but there is not much here in the way of thrills. A woman is murdered, then there is a double murder, enter our damsel, in a wheelchair. She is left alone in her apartment in the capital because everyone is fleeing to the countryside and the coast due to the summer heat. Now, there's a funny thing. "The Next Victim" was screened in April 1976; the summer that followed was the hottest not only in living memory but since records began. In Ladbroke Grove where I was living at the time - a few miles from this imaginary crime scene - people were sleeping out in the streets.

So what does this thriller, so-called, have to offer? A red herring or two, but its saving grace is a real twist at the end. Having said that, the police - who never interact with the damsel - are somewhat superfluous, bar one glimpse at a photograph you might miss, especially if you are yawning at the time.

This wasn't that bad an episode -- in fact, it was very gripping at times -- but the "ending" was so muddled and confused, I gave it only 2 stars, for if one can't understand the ending, what's the point of the episode, no matter how gripping it was at times? Seems like they had run out of time, and so threw together a terribly hasty and confusing end to it all, just to be done with it. Awful, awful ending! One of the worst episodes of "Thriller" ever.

Carroll Baker had caused a big splash in the 1950s with her starring role as "Baby Doll" but by the mid 1970s she was just another faded star picked as the "token" American for this confused "Thriller" episode. She did look terrific and added a touch of elegance in lots of chiffon and perfectly done hair as Sandy, the wheel chair bound wife of Leslie Marshall who, immediately they are settled in their "luxurious" apartment, finds he has to leave her on her own as he dashes overseas for a big meeting. Just before though, he is not at all keen on her accompanying her friends on a Mediterranean holiday - very suspicious!! In no time at all she is on her own, coping with an oddball caretaker with a mother complex (his room is full of magazine pictures of mothers and babies), a broken air conditioner (Britain is going through a heat wave), a disconnected phone and blaring headlines that tell her that a strangler is on the loose "just like the one in Boston"!!!!

This is another of those "lone woman running from a demented killer" ones like the far, far superior "I'm the Girl He Wants to Kill". While trying to find her friend from a few floors down (and who has already fallen victim to the strangler) she finds herself conversing with an eager young man who with a few jokes puts her completely at her ease and before long is completely at his ease in her apartment knocking back G and Ts. He also has "mother" issues - looking after his wheel chair bound mother for 10 years he has an insight into Sandy's feelings, but he also has Sandy feeling uncomfortable and thinking about her car accident and whether Leslie may have been able to prevent it!!

It definitely took a while to get going and seemed to finish quickly without tying up loose ends. Leslie did have ulterior motives but no one really trusted him much anyway, only Sandy. And also a lot of the reasoning at the end I feel had to do with Sandy's hysteria and heightened worry that Max (the young man) may be the strangler that the police are looking for - not the reality that he is not actually behaving in a demented manner (the strangler seems to kill his victims at random and instantly) - Max takes the trouble to get to know Sandy and seems to genuinely like her. And nothing happened to the caretaker who so obviously needed help!!!

T.P. McKenna makes another welcome appearance (he was in the initial Thriller episode "Lady Killer") as laid back detective Frampton.