Night call twilight zone3/30/2023 ![]() That this works as well as it does is testament both to Cooper’s performance, and to direction of Jacques Tourneur. ![]() Which means that nearly all the drama of the half-hour is focused on the mystery of the calls themselves. But while Elva relies on both to an extant, neither are able to dissuade her from her course. The people around her do both the operator and Elva’s housekeeper/companion Margaret (Nora Marlowe) argue that she’s just imagining things. Plot-wise, there isn’t a lot going on here: the episode never becomes repetitive (Richard Matheson, working from his own short story, makes sure that each call Elva receives pushes the narrative forward slightly-from static, to moaning, to actual words), and there’s no time wasted on the protagonist doubting the evidence of her senses. The operator insists that it’s impossible for her to have received the calls she claims to have received, but Elva immediately recognizes the truth. ![]() Finally, Elva calls the phone company and learns the truth: a storm knocked down some lines locally, and one of those lines fell into a cemetery. But as the calls continue, a voice comes on the other line, a man’s voice-moaning, and then trying desperately to communicate. At first, all she hears on the other end of the line is static, which is bad enough. The story is relatively simple: an elderly woman named Elva Keene (Gladys Cooper) starts getting strange phone calls in the middle of the night. “Night Call,” a deeply creepy half-hour of television, makes great use of the night, both in its visuals and in its premise.
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