Night Call

Mrs. Elva Keene, a grumpy (mainly because she’s...), lonely, handicapped, elderly woman, confined to a wheelchair, is getting eerie phone calls from a moaning, sorrowful voice groaning out, “Hello…helloooooo…” Badgering the phone company for answers, informed that the storm has downed many lines, by the operator who mentions that it could be a bad, faulty connection (before learning from Keene that there’s actually someone’s voice on the other line), Keene becomes increasingly agitated, worried, and frightened by the calls, wanting to know the person tormenting her with these repeated efforts to (maybe) contact her.

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Night Call is another favorite of mine from the latter part of the Twilight Zone, as the series was about to meet its end. Gladys Cooper really gives us a complaining, irritable, and tiresome character who, I’m sure, isn’t an easy person to tend to, with her nurse, Margaret (Nora Marlowe)—not to mention phone company operator, Miss Fitch (Martine Bartlett)—having to endure this woman’s constant ranting about this and that. Whether it is her family not giving her much attention, the general loneliness she endures, and eventually the debacle with the “gentleman caller”, Margaret gets a lot of bellyaching from her client. Admittedly, I think I love Night Call primarily for the spooky twist involving the mystery caller leaving a cranky crippled old lady a loss of nerves, but this episode has some serious talent involved in the creative process both aesthetically and creatively both in presentation and story. 

Director Jacques Tourneur brings that Val Lewton touch to the night scenes when Cooper is in bed with the shadowy branches outside creeping in on her, the phone is presented as both a nuisance and terror, and the later visit to the cemetery where we see the phone line located on a particular grave, near a specific tombstone, adding extra potency to the voice that wishes to speak to Keene. Matheson’s script comments on Keene’s self-inflicted damage, a past accident that haunts the present, the grave a reminder of how everything went wrong.

The response of “I always do what you say” after repeated attempts to talk with Keene, rejected accidentally because she didn’t know his identity, silence now occupying the other side of the line, the camera holding on an empty wheelchair and sobbing aloud because, once again, she’s left all alone, an opportunity to communicate with a long lost love no longer an option, Matheson and Tourneur’s contribution to The Twilight Zone strongly bookends (well, I believe) a series that had lost its once sweet savour by the end (there were still gems like Ida Lupino’s The Masks and Richard Donner’s Jeopardy Room though left for us to enjoy…). 

In its twilight year, The Twilight Zone had a mixture of quality and uninspired episodes. I think, even though based on an urban legend, Night Call takes this premise and delivers in all areas. After a while, even the most successful series start to falter unless the creative forces behind them can continue to produce freshly inventive stories and content that not only casts a spell over us in terms of compelling storytelling but also tap into themes we can relate to. Night Call, for me, was a bright spot during the time of the series when episodes started to feel similar, familiar, and repetitive to others in the past. If you get the chance during one of the marathons often featured during holidays on Syfy, give Night Call a shot. Like The Grave, it might be a nice surprise.