What a difference a producer (and an imaginative director) can make! Fletcher Markle is OUT (with a couple more of his dreary crime shows still in the can) and William Frye has begun to slowly guide "Thriller" into its glory period.
I would include "Purple Room" among my dozen favorite Thrillers---it's just so damned cool and atmospheric, ESPECIALLY for a guy (me) who remembers that great Halloween/fall/spooky time-of-year feeling in the late 50's; this episode ABSOLUTELY captures it, especially with the nightmarish "PSYCHO" house as the main setting.
Karloff's intro is superb; note how he rushes onscreen, while the background does a few in-and-out-of focus shifts. (I was puzzled by the DVD commentary's discussion of Richard Anderson being ON THE SET WITH KARLOFF for the filming of this intro; looks to me like rear-projection: how else could the out-of-focus background thing be done? Also, the 3 principal actors look distinctly "down a generation" in terms of visual clarity compared to Boris).
Rip Torn's performance is a text-book example of a young, N.Y. trained actor methodically working his way from caustic and cynical to that creepy, crawly, pit-of-stomach terror that results in a total stroke-out. Masterful.
The Ghost scene, which I remember clearly from the June '61 NBC summer rerun of this episode, is one of the iconic scenes in all Thriller-dom. Here's Rip Torn essentially "playing to" a pitch-black room and a dumbshow-style apparition that moves ever-so-slowly out of the shadows; you HAVE to imagine yourself back in the actual 1960 time period to really appreciate how TERRIFYING this sequence is. (Hey, I never realized that the mask is a make-over of the Cagney "Man of 1000 Faces"-Phantom thing!)
I love Pete Rugolo's contemporary, late-50's jazz/horror infused score for this specific episode....those eerie whistling violin harmonics, the ominously thumping drums and plucked strings, the cheezy electronic organ/Novachord playing the "Thriller" motif...very cool stuff, especially during Richard Anderson's long story-telling scene, when director Doug Heyes shows us nothing but spooky shots of the gloomy, elegant, 19th-century room.
Admittedly, the post-ghost progression of "Purple Room" is a let-down, though Richard Anderson's OWN monologue, with the roles now reversed as HE now addresses a dark room and confronts a terrifying apparition, is very effective. (I have always admired Anderson's poise and subtle "bite" onscreen, though his range is a tad limited. If you want to see him at his best, check "Combat's" 2nd season "Silent Cry").
In any case-- with this episode, Director/writer Doug Heyes clearly revealed the potential for turning the dull, heavy-handed, unfocused crime stuff of "Thriller" into the classic, one-of-a-kind, iconic Horror show it would eventually become. It would still be a slow journey, but "The "Purple Room" stands as the first truly memorable show of the series. LR