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“Night Call”
The Twilight Zone episode

A broken telephone wire, hanging on the grave of Elva Keene’s deceased fiancé.

Episode no. Season 5
Episode 139
Written by Richard Matheson

(From his story “Long distance call” originally published in Alone by Night 1961.)

Directed by Jacques Tourneur

Guest stars Gladys Cooper : Elva Keene
Nora Marlowe : Margaret Phillips

Original airdate February 7, 1964

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 ”

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 the only response is “Hello?” Finally the caller 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 the astonishment of both, they find themselves at a cemetery, and they find that the line is resting on the grave of Elva’s long-deceased fiancé, Brian Douglas. Elva says that she always insisted upon having her own way, and Brian 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 she, 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. Then the line goes dead, leaving Elva alone and crying in her bed.

Closing narration

“ 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.