Night Call

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The Twilight Zone original series Season five (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5) Fall 1963 – Summer 1964 List of The Twilight Zone episodes
Episodes: In Praise of Pip Steel Nightmare at 20,000 Feet A Kind of a Stopwatch The Last Night of a Jockey Living Doll The Old Man in the Cave Uncle Simon Probe 7, Over and Out The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms A Short Drink From a Certain Fountain Ninety Years Without Slumbering Ring-a-Ding Girl You Drive The Long Morrow The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross Number 12 Looks Just Like You Black Leather Jackets Night Call From Agnes—With Love Spur of the Moment An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Queen of the Nile What's in the Box The Masks I Am the Night—Color Me Black Sounds and Silences Caesar and Me The Jeopardy Room Stopover in a Quiet Town The Encounter Mr. Garrity and the Graves The Brain Center at Whipple's Come Wander With Me The Fear The Bewitchin' Pool

“Night Call” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

[edit] Details

Episode number: 139
Season: 5
Production code: 2610
Original air date: February 7, 1964
Writer: Richard Matheson, from his story, “Sorry, Right Number”, originally published in Alone by Night (1961).
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Producer: Bert Granet
Director of photography: Robert Pittack
Music: Stock

[edit] Cast

Elva Keene: Gladys Cooper
Margaret Phillips: Nora Marlowe

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

An elderly, wheelchair-bound lady named Elva Keene receives strange anonymous phone calls. At first the caller says nothing. In subsequent calls, he can be heard moaning. Finally he manages to get out the words, “Where are you? I want to talk to you.”

Elva has had enough and screams at the man to leave her alone. There are no more calls and the phone company traces the source to a telephone line fallen in a cemetery. She could not have received any calls.

Elva and her housekeeper visit the cemetery, and finds that the line is resting on the grave of Elva’s fiancé, Brian Douglas. She always insisted upon having her own way, and he always did what she said. A week before they were to be married, she insisted upon driving, and lost control of the car. The accident left Brian dead, and her a lonely cripple. Now 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. She pleads with him to answer so that she can talk to him. He replies that she has told him to leave her alone, and that he always does what she says.

In the closing narration, Rod Serling remarks that "It is the right of every man, woman, and child to create their own personal hell."

[edit] Trivia

Originally scheduled to air on November 22, 1963, it was preempted by the Kennedy assassination.
The ending was changed when the episode was adapted from Richard Matheson's short story. After the operator gives away Elva's address over the phone in the original ending, the strange voice later calls and informs her that he will "be right over."