DEATH'S DOOR, from the British spy/sleuth series
The Avengers...starring Patrick Macnee (playing John Steed) and Diana Rigg (Emma Peel)...first aired in October, 1967 and I was right there, watching it in our living room that evening. A high-level, crucial conference with international implications is about to be held, but the man responsible for hosting it and holding the various parties together panics and flees as he approaches the conference door just before it begins. Steed and Peel are enlisted to investigate the trouble, and it appears that the man has had a prophetic dream of the day at hand, with numerous small incidents coinciding with both dream and actual occurrence. At the end of the dream, he is grabbed and forced through the conference door (see above picture) and, once entering, is killed by a falling chandelier...hence the panic in real life. Of course, our heroes figure out the mystery, catch the bad guys and set everything straight...in their typically elegant, clever and witty fashion. What stood out to me in this episode was the dream sequence, very reminiscent of that experienced by Gregory Peck's character in the classic 1948 thriller
Spellbound. But when I first saw
Death's Door, I had only just turned eleven and it wouldn't be for a few more years before I got around to seeing the earlier movie. For special effects alone with the dream sequence I recommend this episode, but then again Macnee and Rigg were fantastic in every one of the
Avengers episodes during this period. I should know: I ended up buying their entire box set on DVD...
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