Thriller (TV Series) Choose a Victim (1961) User Reviews

Great "Thriller" episode

[preppy-3 · 8/10 · 2 December 2017]

Beach bum Ralphie (Larry Blyden) meets wealthy beautiful Edith Landers (Susan Oliver) and falls in love. However she's living with her wealthy and mean old uncle Philip (Vaughn Taylor) who controls all her money and oversees everything she does. Ralphie convinces Edith to help him kill her uncle for the money. Naturally everything goes wrong.

Excellent episode of the Thriller TV series. It has an exciting story with a neat twist at the end. Blyden and Oliver are both VERY attractive and likable and give strong performances. Even pro Bill Barty shows up in a short (sorry) role. Also Blyden wears shorts and has his shirt off a few times to show his muscular body. A great episode!

Ralphie and Edith....a relationship made in Heaven....or, perhaps not.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 21 October 2018]

This episode, interestingly enough, was directed by the actor Richard Carlson.

Ralphie (Larry Blyden) is a sociopathic loser who treats women terribly. Oddly, Edith (Susan Oliver) seems to like him...even though he's far from a great catch. She's pretty and educated...but chooses him! Anyway, they later formulate a plan to murder her uncle...so that she can then inherit the old guy's fortune. How does it work out and what sorts of unexpected twists occur?

This is not a brilliant but a very good and watchable installment of "Thriller"....not among the best but very competently made and worth your time.

Listen baby if you want anything in life you've got to go right after it!

[sol-kay · 6/10 · 21 May 2013]

***SPOILERS*** It's when beatnik beachcomber Ralphie Teal, Larry Bylden, spotted pretty and angelic looking Eidth Landers, Susan Oliver, pull up with her late model sports-car a bell rang in his head. Ralphie decided to get very-friendly with Edith in order to get both into her pants as well as home and burglarize it. It's later that the unsuspecting Edith catches Ralphie breaking into her bedroom looking for her jewelry. Embarrassed and apologetic Ralphie still wins Edith over to his side in him not stealing her valuables but getting her involved in knocking off her in house Uncle Phil, Vaughan Taylor, and getting their, Raphie & Edith, hands on his money.

The plan that Ralphie concocts to knock off Uncle Phil was to stage a fatal car accident with him being the victim. It's Edith who chickens out at the very last moment when she freezes up behind the wheel and doesn't step on the gas to shove Uncle Phil's car off the road and cliff! That as her boyfriend, claiming his car is disabled, Ralphie distracts him. Now on his own Ralphie later does what he at first planned to do kill Uncle Phil with Edith nowhere in sight. But what later happened to both Ralphie & Edith wasn't in the script that they both had in mind or had written.

****SPOILERS*** Alfred Hitchcock like ending with a totally out of the blue change of heart on Edith's part who doubled crossed her lover Ralphie but didn't cover all her bases. As things turned doubt it was Ralphie's old girlfriend, whom he dropped for Edith, Fay played by Tracy Roberts who found the link that linked Edith to her uncle's murder. As for Ralphie he got some kind of revenge in all this with Edith, who turned him into the police, now to be sent up the river, prison, for life together with him.

"Baby, you've got what I call impeccable taste."

[classicsoncall · 7/10 · 27 January 2012]

The way this one should have ended was with Edith Landers (Susan Oliver) leaving the police station with that sly grin and Ralphie Teal (Larry Blyden) left holding the bag. However in a nod to Prohibition Code ethics, Edith is trapped by returning to the scene of the crime trying to hide the evidence of her relationship with Ralph. The real story here is how in the world would a looker like Edith ever fall for a con man like Ralphie boy. And did you get a load of those high top shorts - geez, what a creep.

However I beg to differ with the other couple of reviewers on this board who state it was Edith who suggested getting rid of her uncle (Vaughn Taylor). It was Ralph who actually brought up the idea, she feigning reluctance to the point where he threatened to cut out if she didn't go along with it. Wow, now there was a threat. Not that Ralph was any kind of a mensa candidate, but he should have figured something was up when Edith got turned on by his showing up to rob her.

Say, check out the 'accident' when Ralph pushed the car over the embankment. About half way down the hill, you can see where the fire is ignited underneath the car before it actually crashes and flips over. But heck, TV budgets back in the Sixties just weren't going to allow for a do-over.

Pulpish noir

[jameselliot-1 · 8/10 · 18 September 2010]

Thriller is called the best horror show ever made for TV but for me, One Step Beyond beats it for sheer, bone-chilling consistency. There were some truly great horror episodes yet there were more crime and suspense stories than the superb horrors people remember. Choose A Victim is one of the better crime shows with Larry Blyden, Vaughan Taylor and Susan Oliver. It strongly feels like an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Many of the Thriller crime shows did. (AHH produced some horror stories that rivaled, often surpassed Thriller, like The Jar and The Sign of Satan.) Blyden is an aging beach bum living on the edge in a bungalow near the ocean in a small California town where he sponges off the pointy-bra wearing, stacked owner of an amusement park shooting galley, Tracey Roberts. His personality is similar to his unforgettable role as thief Rocky Valentine in one of the greatest Twilight Zone episodes, A Nice Place To Visit; cocky, obnoxious, pushy, grasping. Blyden meets Susan, an heiress living with her controlling uncle. Finding out her address, he stupidly tries to burglarize her bedroom while she sleeps. She wakes up and he threatens her, which she finds sexually attractive and they begin an affair. Eventually she gets him to kill her uncle. But it's all a game on her part. The plot has enough holes to drive a bus through. Blyden turns in his usual fine job but he is not a handsome chick magnet kind of actor and it's unlikely that a girl who looks like Oliver, or Roberts for that matter, would fall for him. He walks around town in ridiculously tight denim shorts like a cruiser from a Tom of Finland painting. An actor like John Erickson or Gary Conway would have made the story more plausible. That Oliver could date Blyden in secret in a small town without being seen is an unlikely situation to hinge a murder plot on. When it seems that Oliver will get away with it, justice prevails in a muted climax. Sadly, Blyden was robbed and murdered by thugs in Morocco in 75 and Oliver passed from cancer in 1990.

He Had It Coming

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 20 November 2016]

A philandering beach bum comes upon his time. He seems to have the skill of manipulating women, so when he puts the moves on a pretty one, driving a sports car, she quickly succumbs to his story. She is living with an uncle who controls her future financially. She will inherit the money upon his death, so our goldbrick decides that they will kill the guy. Of course, he's not the most trustworthy of people, and the young woman seems to be heading down a dusty road. Anyway, there is more to the story. Once again, their scheme to get the money becomes so tenuous. The one thing the two fail to bargain for is a jilted lover and a perceptive policeman. Oh, get a load of the shorts on the main character. Seriously?

The postman always rings twice in cases of double indemnity.

[mark.waltz · 8/10 · 9 October 2019]

This brilliant "Thriller" episode is a TV noir rehash of the murderous exploits of Stanwyck and MacMurray and Turner and Garfield in the film versions of those classic James Cain crime novels. It deals with amoral lovers Larry Blyden and Susan Oliver, plotting to murder her wealthy, possessive uncle Vaughan Taylor. He objects to his niece constantly spending time at the beach, and unaware that she has become an object of Blyden's alleged affections, unaware that Blyden has stolen an important piece of equipment from her expensive sports car as a way of making her acquaintance. Blyden comes to Oliver's rescue, and soon, he's crawling through her window at night to declare his Romeo like love. But once he has her trust, he also has her plotting with him to kill Taylor, and it is obvious that like those two classic couples from the Cain novels, one will betray the other.

Superb pacing and a youthful atmosphere makes this hip episode one of the few "Thriller" episodes of Season One to get one's attention and keep it because of a superbly dark script and brilliant plotting. Blyden's first several efforts to murder Taylor go up in smoke, and everything surrounding the actual crime makes it seem to go perfect, that is until detective Guy Mitchell gets in on the case. Blyden's amusement park game operator girlfriend Tracey Roberts is also aroused, but by jealousy and suspicion of his neglect and constant disappearances. There's also little Billy Barty as a regular beach visitor. The twists and turns are more dangerous than an old rickety beach rollercoaster, and it's a ride I did not want to see end.

The Chosen

[AaronCapenBanner · 7/10 · 30 October 2014]

Larry Blyden plays Ralphie Teal, a small-time beach bum and crook, who one day spots a beautiful woman named Edith Landers(played by Susan Oliver) He tricks her into believing he has helped fix her nice car, and seemingly grateful, the bored-appearing Edith starts an affair with him, and they concoct a scheme to kill her rich uncle(played by Vaughn Taylor) in order to inherit his money and estate. This plan does not go smoothly at first, but when it does, both will discover an unpleasant truth about the other that will put a new spin on their "choices"... Interesting story is yet another crime episode, but a good cast(especially the radiant Oliver) make a big difference.

Susan Oliver and Tracy Roberts

[kevinolzak · 4/10 · 19 October 2008]

A Maxwell Shane crime entry featuring Larry Blyden as a beach bum who begins a secret affair with a wealthy blonde (Susan Oliver), after bungling an attempted robbery. Eventually, sneaking around town to avoid her disapproving uncle (Vaughn Taylor, from "Psycho") is too much for the would be thief, who wants the girl to help him kill the old man by faking an auto accident in an isolated area on a hilltop road. Standard Hitchcock type drama with a few twists and turns to maintain interest, but hardly enough to stretch into an hour long program. Vaughn Taylor is perfectly cast as the uncle (he died in 1983) while other familiar TV faces include Billy Barty and Henry Corden as the detective. Pretty Susan Oliver (who died in 1990) is best remembered for the STAR TREK pilot "The Cage," opposite Jeffrey Hunter, the unforgettable image of the green skinned dancer. Who says it's not easy being green? Not to be undone in the looks department is Tracey Roberts, as the girl thrown under the bus by our hero, who was 46 at the time but clearly still a babe, shown to great advantage by director Richard Carlson, who appeared as an actor in the later THRILLER "Kill My Love."