Night Call
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“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] Opening Narration
"Miss Elva Keene lives alone on the outskirts of London Flats, a tiny rural community in Maine. Up until now, the pattern of Miss Keene's existence has been that of lying in her bed or sitting in her wheelchair reading books, listening to a radio, eating, napping, taking medication—and waiting for something different to happen. Miss Keene doesn't know it yet, but her period of waiting has just ended, for something different is about to happen to her, has in fact already begun to happen, via two most unaccountable telephone calls in the middle of a stormy night, telephone calls routed directly through—the Twilight Zone."
[edit] Synopsis
An elderly, wheelchair-bound lady named Elva Keene receives strange anonymous phone calls. At first the caller says nothing, and all that can be heard is static. In subsequent calls, he can be heard moaning. After several calls, Elva says repeatedly, "Hello? Hello?" The caller finally says slowly, garbled, and weakly, "Hello?". Elva demands to know who is calling, but her only respone is "Hello?" 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 fallen telephone line.
Elva and her housekeeper visit the location of the line given by the telephone operator. To both of their astonishment, they find themselves at the cemetery, and finds that the line is resting on the grave of Elva’s fiancé, Brian Douglas. Elva says that she always insisted upon having her own way, and Bryan 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. And then the line goes dead.
[edit] Closing Narration
"According to the Bible, God created the heavens and the Earth. It is man's preogative—and woman's—to create their own particular and private hell. Case in point, Miss Elva Keene, who in every sense has made her own bed and now must lie in it; sadder, but wiser, by dint of a rather painful lesson in responsibility, transmitted from the Twilight Zone."
[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."
- The second season episode, Long Distance Call, also deals with a phone call from beyond the grave.
[edit] Themes
Compare “The Man in the Bottle”, “The Trouble With Templeton”, “The Last Night of a Jockey”,“ Escape Clause”, “The Mind and the Matter”, “Time Enough at Last” and “I Dream of Genie”.
[edit] References
- Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
