What a welcome SHOCK! From here on, producer William Frye was grooved in and would regularly turn out masterful, moody and compelling small screen horror. Except that "Well of Doom" is a horror episode that's really a CRIME episode...but that's not important.
Henry Daniell's Grand Guignol portrayal of Mollock---hissing, cackling, sneering, sadistic, imperious, malevolent---is a tour-de-force beyond anything than one would ever have imagined coming from a weekly TV series, no matter how "thrilling" it claimed to be. It's WAY off the chart!; the man was simply an incredible performer. And how fascinating to see him "au naturel" in the final scenes, so hellishly believable had he been throughout the show.
Team him up with his countryman Torin Thatcher (who had just finished menacing Kerwin Matthews in "Jack the Giant Killer", filmed in July of 1960), add another fine Brit in Ronald Howard...and you've got yourself one heck of a dramatic ensemble. A solid script, amazingly atmospheric camerawork, excellent direction (it seems clear that the three major actors and John Brahm got along very well on this one) and incredibly spooky settings all contribute to the power of this episode. We all know that the tension-filled walk from the car through the moors to the castle was filmed on a soundstage, but Penrose and Teal seem to be literally ON THEIR WAY DOWN TO HELL, as they desperately try to escape. Really chilling, terrifying stuff.
So effective is this show that one easily overlooks the obvious mummy/dummy that's used for Penrose being tossed down the well at the close of Act 3, and Richard Kiel's good-old college try at line readings in the final scene, which, I'll admit, strains credulity in a number of ways.
Composer Jerry Goldsmith does it again, this time with low brass, rumbling bass drum, and a writhing, serpentine theme played by low trumpets in unison, a bold and almost nauseating sound that ramps up the thrills and chills of this first-rate episode. LR
