Four Star Playhouse 1.16

Night Ride

starring David Niven

written by Lawrence Marcus, Seeleg Lester, Merwin Gerard

directed by Robert Florey

A man (David Niven) boards a subway train at Roscoe Street in Brooklyn late at night with five other people. Two police men come running up and just miss the train. A couple people were killed near the subway station minutes before. All five passengers start to suspect one another on the long ride to the next station. At one point one of them gets their hands on the axe that is there to be used in case of emergency. A fight breaks out.

Finally the train arrives at its destination. A police man is on the platform waiting to board it. Four of the five passengers are convinced that the fifth passenger is the killer. They try to turn him over to the cop. It is then that they learn that the killer was caught back in Brooklyn, while they were between stations.

Thoughts

I'm curious about how this episode was shot. It looked like it might have been shot in an actual subway train. At the end of the episode there is a shot of one of the characters walking up a flight of stairs out of the station.

This was a pretty good episode. It got a little tense. All five actors who played the passengers on the train were very good. Aside from the five the only other actors who appeared in this episode were three actors playing police officers.

Notes

This is the fourth of 32 episodes of this show that starred David Niven.

Christine Larson played the part of Carol, the only female passenger on the train. This is the second of two episodes of this show in which she appeared. She was also in 1.12 The Man in the Box but she had a much smaller part in that episode.

Jay Novello played the part of Barnes the bookkeeper. This is the second of four episodes of this show in which he appeared. The previous episode in which he appeared was 1.03 The Lost Silk Hat.

Rhys Williams played the part of the nameless bum. This is the third of six episodes of this show in which he appeared. The previous episode in which he appeared was 1.09 The Man on the Train.

Adam Williams played the part of George. This is the only episode of this show in which he appeared. I saw him most recently in an episode of The Twilight Zone (1959) 1.16 The Hitch-Hiker.

Ray Walker played the part of the police officer on the platform at the end of the episode. This is the third of nine episodes in which he appeared. The first two were 1.02 Dante's Inferno and 1.15 The Last Voyage. He also had a small part in It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

Lawrence Marcus wrote the story that was the basis for the teleplay for this episode. This is the second of five episodes of this show that he wrote. The previous one was 1.01 My Wife Geraldine. Seeleg Lester and Merwin wrote the screenplay for this episode. This is the first of five episodes of this show on which that Lester and Gerard both worked. Lester also worked on the scripts for four episodes of The Outer Limits (1963), the first of which was 2.08 Wolf 359.

This is the 14th of 38 episodes of this show that Robert Florey directed.