The 25 Best Twilight Zone Episodes...#25 - "Night Call"

The telephone call has been put to terrifying use in a multitude of films and television dramas through the years. The movie, "When a Stranger Calls," which features harrowing calls originating from (gasp) "inside the house!" has been made and remade. Perhaps the most suspenseful segment of Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window" occurs when Jimmy Stewart answers the phone while perched at his catbird seat by the window, only to find he's been duped into unwittingly identifying himself. What follows is the film's denouement as Raymond Burr slowly climbs the stairs, ventures down the hallway, and visits the wheelchair-bound voyeur. You might recall Rex Harrison driving Doris Day to distraction via the telephone in "Midnight Lace," and Barbara Stanwyck overhearing a conversation about her own murder on the phone in "Sorry, Wrong Number."

There are a myriad of examples. One of the more harrowing can be found in Twilight Zone's "Night Call," interestingly adapted from a short story entitled "Sorry, Right Number."

The historic television series, The Twilight Zone, turns 50 this year, and to commemorate Rod Serling's masterpiece, the 25 best episodes will be chronicled here. "Night Call" is number 25 on this "best of" list, the result of an unscientific poll of 250 people in the New York metropolitan area who were asked to rank their favorite Twilight Zone episodes based on writing, performance, and compelling subject matter

If you close your eyes, you might be able to hear Mr. Serling's unsettling introductory narrative - "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."

Three-time Oscar-nominated Gladys Cooper, who conducted a brilliant stage and screen career that endured nearly 60 years, played Elva Keene with a touch of pain, irritability, discomfort, and outright fear. When young, Ms. Keene claimed the life of her fiancé in an accident that left her permanently crippled. In this episode, brutal thunderstorms lay the groundwork for static-filled telephone calls to Elva that become more frequent as the half-hour program moves forward. Eventually, we learn the calls emanated from the cemetery where the storms played havoc, knocking telephone lines to the ground, including the fateful one lying on Elva's fiance's grave.

Deftly written by Richard Matheson and acted by Gladys Cooper, "Night Call" is one of Twilight Zone's more chilling episodes...the threatening storm, the dark of night, the unnerving isolation, the absence of any sound other than the thunder and the telephone ring, the emptiness at the other end of the line.
After spending the episode screaming into the phone for her tormentor to leave her alone, she is granted her wish at the end by her fiancé who always followed her direction, as he did on the fateful night she convinced him to let her drive...with disastrous results. So again, a lifetime later, she is left alone.

Mr. Serling's epitaph summarizes beautifully - "According to the Bible, God created the heavens and the Earth. It is man's prerogative-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."