And so back to The Twilight Zone for six more stories, and boy, did I ever pick a great one. I hadn’t heard of Richard Matheson’s “Night Call” before, but since we’d seen Gladys Cooper in a couple of other Zone stories, I figured we might as well enjoy the hat trick.
“Night Call” is amazing. It probably started a flaming epidemic of kids making prank calls and quietly saying “…hell….oh…?” at two in the morning back in ’63, because it’s that darn good and that creepy. It shouldn’t be this way; it just sounds like pure hokum, an old lady getting increasingly panicked by a disembodied voice on her phone at all hours, but Cooper really sells both the panic and the character’s loneliness. Nora Marlowe plays the old lady’s home health nurse, and while long-suffering isn’t quite the right term, you’d think that her charge would listen to her very sensible advice to just hang up and leave the receiver off the hook.
Our son thought it was so creepy that he was grumbling and hiding before the commercial break. And he’s right. It’s just delicious. The twist was a terrific punch in the gut… and then Cooper decides to pick up the receiver and start talking to her caller. I about died. Mom had to lie down in bed with our son for a few minutes and cuddle him. If any of the next few we’re going to watch are half this good, I’ll be satisfied.
Related: You have seen The Phone, right?
Fire Breathing Dimetrodon Time 
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