I hate to point this out, but this is one of those RMTs that "borrows" just a little too much from its uncredited source material--which in this case is the short story "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" by Robert Bloch (best known as the author of the novel PSYCHO). This episode is a simple extension of Bloch's basic idea of Jack the Ripper's spirit living on in a modern-day killer...the show even features a main character named Guy, just as the story does (though the last names are different). Bloch's tale, from the 1940s, is well-known and widely anthologized; it was even done on TV in the early 1960s, on the Boris Karloff series THRILLER.

I enjoyed the program in its way, I guess, but was really distracted by the obvious...well, I don't want to say theft, but this is *clearly* Robert Bloch's story.

Then again, a whole thread could be devoted to the borrowings of the RMT--from TWILIGHT ZONE, from "The Monkey's Paw" and other classic stories, from then-current movies. With such a crazed workload for the writers, some of this kind of thing was inevitable, I suppose.

It would be interesting to know if any writers ever complained about the show borrowing from their works....

An interesting choice, if not necessarily for the right reasons!