"Night Call"

"Night Call"

Mysterious phone calls haunt a disabled woman.

Stars Gladys Cooper, Nora Marlowe.
Original air date: February 7, 1964 (postponed from November 22, 1963, because of assassination of John F. Kennedy).

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This one was quite clever and taps an inner fear that I think most of carry, my assesment- excellent.

This one is in my top 10. One of my favorite beginings with the lightning storm and the phone ringing in the middle of the night with no one on the line. I also like the transition that occurs in the cemetery when Elva realizes the calls are coming from her deceased fiance. Poor Elva is so lonely that all she can think about is that now she has someone to talk to - no fear, just happiness at "not being lonely any more". From that point (and the transition is beautifully handled with the sad string piece playing) the episode becomes melancholy. I can't think of any other episode where there is such a complete change of atmosphere like this.

http://fusionanomaly.net/twilightzonenightcallgrave.jpg

Thank Fred Steiner for that piece. It's from "The Passersby." Paul Giammarco would have to supply the cue title, though.

By the way, wouldn't the telephone company shortly repair that downed line, thereby cutting off communication with Brian not much later than actually occurs?

The cue is called "Jud's Song".

Dan Hollis wrote:

Yep, I mentioned that on one of the old boards. Poor Elva can't win no matter how you slice it.

http://aycu16.webshots.com/image/5335/2003...48266433_rs.jpg

Yeah, what Crown said.

I do love creepy Zones and this makes the cut on that. Cut, get it?

Oh Crown, phone for you.

Leen

loved that storm scene in the beginning. really set the mood for a great Zone!!! Oh, and Gladys Cooper was a wonderful TZ actress imho in Nothing in the Dark and Passage on the Lady Anne also...well done in all 3...

Paul Harvey began this Wednesday's morning newscast with a story about David Towles of Auburn, MA. It seems he has an unpaid Sprint bill that has been turned over to the town clerk. "The phone call was made recently from David Towles at the Evergreen Hillside Cemetery, where David has been buried for five years."

You can hear this at http://paulharvey.com by clicking on the Wednesday morning link until it's replaced on Wednesday, December 15.

This one isn't that bad, but it never really grabbed me.

Legion, I think you're right about this one tapping into an innate fear. Who wants to get a phone call in the middle of the night?

How did she get money to live on (including paying a private nurse)? Maybe she married someone else later and he died too.

Offhand, I'm not sure if the story rules out that possibility or not. Good question, though. Maybe she inherited money? In fact, maybe she was so bossy with Brian because she was a spoiled rich girl growing up who was used to getting everything she wanted. Food for thought . . .

Kanamit picked this as one of the first examples for his "Poetic Injustice" thread, here: http://www.ibforfree.com/members/index.php...r&showtopic=384. It does seem like this is a harsh ending for Elva (or, in light of the point that Dan Hollis brought up, perhaps just a pointless one). I'm not sure this was better than the original ending of Richard Matheson's story, in which the corpse tells Elva, "I'll be right over." Granted, if they had actually shown Brian's "return" on television, it would have been either too unrealistic or too gross.

In the "Poetic Injustice" thread, I came up with an alternate ending to this episode that I like better than the real one. After realizing that the voice is really Brian's, Elva apologizes for her part in the accident. She regrets having been such a demanding and fussy person throughout her life, and asks Brian if he can possibly still love her enough to forgive her. After a pause long enough to create dramatic tension, Brian says yes. The next morning, Elva's aide finds her dead in bed, holding the phone against her chest, a look of peace on her face. She takes the phone from Elva's hands, holds it to her ear, and hears only silence. Unfortunately, they didn't consult me...

Say what?? What's up with that?

Elva didn't know it was Brian on the other end at first. She was afraid and wanted the phone calls to stop. We all know that. I don't think she got what she deserved at all!! At her age a little phone companionship with her true love from the afterlife would have been a good thing! No not a 1-900 number.

I like Bevis's ending. Let's say we call all that were involved with the ep (afterlife or not) and do a redo!

Leen

Sounds good to me, Leen!

I suppose they'll use the fact that I wasn't born yet as their excuse for not consulting me. It's true, I wasn't born yet. But it's not like I wasn't answering my messages....

Youngster

I like your ending better too, James BWB. I alway felt sorry for Elva and felt her character was unfairly treated.

SPOILER

This is a good creepy one, but I'm glad I saw it as a kid,
because now I work for the telephone company, and I know
that tracing calls to a fallen wire or cable makes no sense.
It distracts me every time now, but it's the first viewing that counts.

Yes, I know that a rotting corpse making phone calls
from a grave makes no sense either, but it's not meant to.
I have no similar complaint about "Long Distance Call."

Syndication cuts eliminate all footage of the operator, Miss Finch,
although we still hear her voice. She was played by Martine Bartlett,
who portrayed the viciously abusive mother in Sybil with Sally Field.

All three players are women, not counting whoever did Brian's voice.
Agnes Moorehead delivered a solo performance in "The Invaders,"
with the director providing a voice in the last scene.

Are there any other episodes with all-female casts?

No, there aren't, and that is an excellent observation. In fact, you beat me to my plans to post this as a trivia question down the line. As long as you've raised this issue, I'd like to take it to a separate thread called "Gender Bias?" outside of the episode threads. I've posted it here:

http://twilightzonewor.9.forumer.com/index...ct=ST&f=4&t=408

This page from www.snopes.com is at least vaguely related to "Night Call," and mentions it: http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/phone.htm.

excellent episode.. very haunting!

now, i am not saying that elva got what she deserved but..
elva was a very domineering person and she doesn't seem like the nicest person around. now maybe all her friends are gone and we really don't know about elva's life after brian but she doesn't seem like a person you would go out of the way for. case in point is margaret. elva asks margaret if she was the one who called during the storm and margaret says no, and elva says that it didn't hurt to ask and that she doesn't pay her for nights. now if you really liked your employer, and felt it would be appreciated, it wouldn't matter if you got paid or not, you might check up on them if it was a stormy night.

my point is that maybe elva would not be so lonely if she wasn't so harsh with others and she wouldn't have to rely on brian for company.

-ag

I agree, at least up to a point. No, Elva isn't the nicest "old biddy" on the block but I feel she has been left bitter by what happened years ago (violently loosing her fiance and winding up a paraplegic). Surely that was punishment enough. The ending of the show implied the fates felt she still had not suffered enough. This is why I feel she was treated unfairly. Even Rod's closing narration sounds unusually cold and unfeeling.
It's been my experience that it take alot to make the elderly cry. Elva is truly miserable at the end of the story and you just can't help but feel sorry for her.

no i agree that elva has suffered enough. but what happens is her own doing. i understand elva was frightened and wanted the creepy calls to stop but she did ask for them to stop. instead of being bitter about the accident and becoming a more giving person then maybe her situation would have been different. however, like someone else has said, once the phone line is repaired, brian can't call her anyway.

btw.. i like mr bevis' ending to elva's story. at least she can find peace in his version.

-ag

She asked for the calls to stop because she did not know who they were from. She understandably assumed they were from a crank caller and she had a perfectly normal reaction. I felt she was also being punished for that, which seems even more unfair. Was she supposed to "know" they were from beyond the grave? Even Brian himself seems not to understand that he would have to identify himsef not to get the frightened reaction that he did.
It almost seems like Brian, Rod and the powers that be were all ganging up on poor Elva for no real reason.
But be that as it may, the entire package is very watchable and this is one of the episodes in my top 10.

From the questions that need to be answered department:

If Elva had caller ID what would it say? My daughter says "Unknown Caller."

This is the ep where the housekeeper says Miss Keene a million times. Well maybe not in the syndicated version quite a million.

Only 999,998 times.

Great episode! I have always enjoyed the feel! The creepy calls late at night and other times, the moaning, etc... I felt bad for Elva in the end

Maybe you wouldn't feel so bad if you realized Elva only assumed that she'd have friendly to romantic conversations with Brian. For all she knew, he might have wanted to strangle her for driving their car into that tree.

Is it really necessary for him to have done all that from-the-grave moaning??? No wonder she was scared out of her wits. Such a cliche, I would have liked to think he's in a happy place. But as Dan pointed out perhaps he had some unfinished business.

Dan Hollis wrote:

But why wait 32 years? If he wants to come by and strangle her, why call at all? If he wants to kill her, why end with "I always do what you say" and ring off?
No, it seems as if he just wants to talk as he said.

He didn't have phone access until then

Er ... yes, I was afraid someone would pick up on that.

I actually meant "strangle" in a more figurative sense, although I wasn't ruling out its literal meaning. I was thinking more along the lines of Brian's wanting to give Elva a piece of his mind and then shutting her out. True, that's not the Brian we hear at the end, but Elva can't really know for sure that he'll still be a wimp until that final conversation.

I was also considering Matheson's original short story, which I reread after making my previous post. There's more difference between short story and episode than one might infer from Zicree. The point of departure is when Elva learns about the downed line in the cemetery. She never goes there, we never learn how she became crippled, there's no mention of a fiancé, and the caller is never identified. All we know is that there is one final call: "Hello, Miss Elva. I'll be right over." So whatever logic there is to this might also get the dead Brian to visit Elva in the teleplay, and this logic extends to this not being a possibility until the phone link has been established.

I'm still not sure Brian was being a wimp. Maybe he was being sarcastic. Offhand, I don't remember his voice sounding sarcastic, but it might be harder to tell these things where the undead are concerned.

We've got a "Night Call"-related thread here. The first post contains spoilers. Read it, you'll like it.

His voice doesn't suggest any recognizable emotion.
It seems he's struggling to speak at all.
Maybe he's a little out of practice.

Anyone know who provided the voice of Brian?

Exactly what I was trying to get at. Thanks, Kanamit.

Good question about who played Brian. Zicree's book doesn't have that info, and I don't know if it's available anywhere.

I guess if he's someone who is no longer with us, we will have to wait for a telephone line to fall over his grave.
"Where are all of you? I want to join the Forum".

this is a scary episode if you watching it at night time alone:(

Could he be the Phantom Chatperson?

9
The only true 'ghost story' episode of the original 156
MAIDEN did a song about this one!