The Mark of the Whistler

This entry is the best in this above-average series from Columbia. All the stories had intriguing premises and clever twists, but this one even more so, since it was based on an original by Cornell Woolrich, that master of gloom, fate and paranoia. You definitely won't see the last curveball coming. There's a nice element of "Crime and Punishment"-like guilt infiltrating the protagonist's shady exploits, although it's not directly responsible for his downfall. The material is the essence of noir, but Castle filmed it straightforwardly for the most part. In his early days before churning out his gimmicky horror pics, he knew how to add telling little touches and include fascinatingly offbeat characters on the margins. All the same, one can't help thinking that this might have been a low-budget noir masterpiece along the lines of "Blind Spot" or "Fear in the Night" if the style had been more doom-laden and shadowy.