Episode no. Season 5
Episode 19 Featured music Stock Original air date February 7, 1964 | Directed by Jacques Tourneur Production code 2610 | |
Written by Richard Matheson
(From his story "Long Distance Call" originally published in Shock 1961.) | ||
"Night Call" is episode 139 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It is based on Richard Matheson's short story, although it ends much differently.
Plot
An elderly woman, Elva Keene (Gladys Cooper), receives strange anonymous phone calls in the middle of a stormy night. During the first calls she hears only static. Later she hears a man moaning and she repeatedly demands to know who is calling. Finally he says "Hello? Where are you? I want to talk to you." Elva, terrified, screams at the man to leave her alone.
The phone company traces the cause to a telephone line that has fallen in a cemetery.
Elva and her housekeeper visit the cemetery where she finds that the line is resting on the grave of her long-deceased fiancé, Brian Douglas. Elva says that she always insisted on having her own way, and Brian always did what she said. Brian died a week before they were to be married. That day, she insisted on driving, lost control of the car and hit a tree. The accident crippled her and caused Brian to fly headfirst into the windshield, killing him.
Now that she can talk to him again she won't have to be alone. At home she picks up the phone and calls out to Brian's ghost, pleading with him to answer. He replies that she told him to leave her alone and that he always does what she says. Then the line goes dead, leaving Elva alone and crying in her bed.