Original Airdate: April 09, 1974

Episode 0071 "The Murder Museum"

Original Story by Henry Slesar Directed by Himan Brown Host: E.G. Marshall

A museum dedicated to criminals becomes the scene of the retelling of a real murder when the relative of one of the "exhibits" protests his placement in the museum.

You're about to be taken on an unusual museum tour. There won't be any Mona Lisa's on this tour, no Greek vases or Roman statuary, because this establishment specializes in only one kind of exhibit and that's why our story is called The Murder Museum. You may have been to a murder museum like the one in our story, a house of wax, where the most brutal crimes of the century are recreated and paraffined for the wide-eyed enjoyment of the public. But now you're going to have the unique opportunity of hearing one of the most shocking exhibits of all, speak for itself.

It begins inside the murder museum itself, the home of Professor Rafael Gallinari's House of Horrors. There's a fair-sized crowd in the museum today. As usual, they listen in fascination to the words of their tour guide as he takes them from one bloody exhibit to another, recreating for them the terrible crimes which have immortalized these criminals and their victims. There is one person in the crowd who seems reluctant to listen to his words, who hangs back and shields her pretty eyes from the sight of the wax images. Her name is Lisa Brandon.

Starring: Marian Seldes, Michael Wager, Leon Janny, Robert Dryden

Original Airdate: April 08, 1974

Episode 0070 "The Locked Room"

Original Story by Henry Slesar Directed by Himan Brown Host: E.G. Marshall

A bride's mother plays villain in the life of a newly wed couple. She is convinced the boy has married her not-too-beautiful daughter simply for her wealth and plans a nasty surprise for him.

This is a tale of young love. The love of a charming young man for a charming young girl. It is also the story of a mother's love for her child. As you can see, this story is positively dripping with love. But don't be dismayed, because love, like a door, has two sides. And when the other side is hatred, it can drip with venom and gore.

We're on a lonely highway that winds its way into the hilly regions upstate. The hour is late, and the sleek white sports car whose hood ornament faces north is the only vehicle for miles around. Even the sound of its purring engine doesn't seem to disturb the quiet of the countryside. But inside the car, the sound level is something very different.

Starring: Carmen Matthews, Corrine Orr, Sydney Smith, Jack Grimes

Original Airdate: April 03, 1974

Episode 0068 "Die! You're On Magic Camera"

Original Story by Murray Burnett Directed by Himan Brown Host: E.G. Marshall

An aspiring photographer obtains a special camera that takes photographs of future events. He soon finds that the people who made the camera want it back. So do those whom were photographed.

Welcome into my world where things are even stranger than they seem. Reality falls before truth. We've all heard that one picture is worth a thousand words. But is this really true? A quick example. Would your sweetheart rather hear you say, I love you, or look at your picture? But pictures have their place as millions of camera fans all over the world will tell you Listen as we hear about a strange and dangerous camera which brought tragedy to those who owned it.

When your host or hostess pulls out the old family album for a quiet evening looking over family snapshots, some people find this enjoyable. Johnny Carlin loved picture taking. At the time our story opens, Johnny had attained a cherished ambition. He was a proud owner of a brand new Volekta S60, a magnificent camera and the very last word in self-developing photography. To add to his happiness, he was taking the very first picture on the Volecta of his beautiful and bubbly girl, Lisa Cain.

Starring: Nick Pryor, Teri Keane, Joan Lovejoy, Joseph Julian, William Redfield.

Original Airdate: April 02, 1974

Episode 0067 "The Pharaoh's Curse"

Original Story by Ian Martin Directed by Himan Brown Host: E.G. Marshall

An archeologist and a songstress unearth valuable jewels, artifacts and a curse in an Egyptian tomb.

For the four centuries before Christ, a remarkable combination of priests and monarchs established one of the most astonishing cultures in the world. The rulers were the pharaohs of Egypt and they left an enduring series of monuments behind them. The Sphinx, the pyramids, the temples of Karnak and Luxor, and most strange of all, Their mummified remains, embalmed by a process lost to modern science. This is the story of one such mummy, and the eternal curse she left to be visited on any violator of her tomb.

1924, 50 years ago, belongs to another world. Certainly in the Middle East, almost midway through the period of the great archaeological excavations that make Egypt a mecca for tourists from all over the world. And in that era, no singer and entertainer reigned more supreme than Diane Elliot. The toast of two continents already, and now in the process of conquering a third with an engagement at Shepard's world famous hotel in Cairo.

Starring: Kim Hunter, Arnold Moss, Ian Martin, George Petrie, Dan Ocko

Original Airdate: April 01, 1974

Episode 0066 "The Black Cat"

Original Story by Edgar Allen Poe, Adapted by Sam Dann

Directed by Himan Brown, Host: E.G. Marshall

A man finds out that when he married his wife, he also married her cat with whom she has a close relationship. The cat convinces him that he will murder his wife. I don't know if you've ever stopped to think about it, but of all the creatures in the animal kingdom, only man, and man alone, will murder his mate simply because she no longer pleases him. True, certain of our friends in fur, fin, or feather will indulge in desertion, or even divorce. But Murder? For that you must have the highest degree of culture and civilization For that you have to be human.

Consider the act of murder. Popular opinion has it the majority of killers are ruthless cold -blooded devoid of pity. But the facts tell a different tale. Statistics reveal most murderers are neither brutal nor savage. The record shows you don't have to be a devil or a demon or even a criminal. Experience teaches a killer could be any one of us. Given the time,the place, the provocation, it could be you. It could be I. And it could even be Philip Sterling.

Starring: Norman Rose, Robert Dryden, Evie Juster, Marian Seldes, Joe DeSantis

Original Airdate: March 28, 1974

Episode 0065 "The Unearthly Gift"

Original Story by Ian Martin, Directed by Himan Brown, Host: E.G. Marshall

The cook of a lumberjack camp has the ability to foresee events. When she has a horrible vision of the new man in camp, she decides to act to prevent another death.

All peoples have their separate legends, their superstitions, and their fears. Julius Caesar once said that all Gaul is divided into three parts. But whatever their political alignments, the Gallic people shared their legends in common, and none more persistent and accepted than the belief in the second sight. Usually called a gift, but one wonders if perhaps it is far more the reverse of that.

Let's begin with two definitions of second sight. The unearthly capacity to see things impossible for ordinary people to see, or the ability to foretell events in the future from the shadows they cast before them. A talent bequeathed to a large, raw-boned and rather plain girl called Ruth Ann Mitchell. She and her grandmother, Bridget Carney, are the only women at a lumber camp high in the Bitterfoot Range, which sprawls across Idaho, Washington, and half of British Columbia. Ruth and Granny cook and keep house for the Lumberjacks.

Starring: Betsy Palmer, Ian Martin, Mason Adams, Jackson Beck

Original Airdate: March 27, 1974

Episode 0064 "Its Simply Murder"

Original Story by Ian Martin Directed by Himan Brown Host: E.G. Marshall

A hen-pecked wimp fantasizes about running away from his despotic wife. Unwittingly, one weekend he gets wound up in a plot to murder her, participate in a bank robbery and get away with a woman he falls for.

This is the story of a natural born loser. Within the quietest and most retiring of the genus Homo sapiens, there lurks a tiger. As indeed, it lurks in all of us. It takes only the right combination of intolerable pressures, unfulfilled dreams, and the opportunity to escape the first and realize the second, to make even the worm turn. Which is just what happened to Henry Green.

One of the simplest and most fiendish devices to drive men mad is the Chinese water torture. The slow drip of water second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour on the forehead. Unending, inescapable, inexorable. Henry Green's life was like that, both in his work and...

Starring: Jack Gilford, Marian Haley, Ian Martin, Dan Ocko, Bryna Raeburn

Original Airdate: March 26, 1974

Episode 0063 "Death By Whose Hands"

Original Story by Ian Martin Directed by Himan Brown Host: E.G. Marshall

Set in the early 1900's; a surgeon attaches the hands of a dead piano player to the arms of his rival. The consequences are deadly.

What would you say is the one single feature that distinguishes man from all his fellow creatures? His brain? Speech? His ability to walk erect? The fact that he's the only living thing that kills for any other reason than self-defense or food? None of them. Something much more simple. A phenomenon shared only by our cousins, the apes. The human hand. This is a gripping, eerie story of a pair of, how best to describe them, superhuman, unique, no, perhaps best, a pair of immortal hands.

In the beginning of the 19th century, no city in Europe shone more brightly, or boasted a more resplendent culture than Vienna. City of dreams, of glittering balls of royalty and nobility and beautiful women, but most of all of music. Music to the Viennese was and is a religion of faith. An insidious destructive emotion which can lead to sinister and deadly results. You are listening at the moment to the hands of Rudy Baum on the piano in Vienna's great concert hall.

Starring: Stephan Schnabel, Robert Drivas, Roger Dekovan, Marian Seldes, Ira Lewis

Original Airdate: March 25, 1974

Episode 0062 "Diary of a Madman"

Original Story by Guy de Maupassant Adapted by Sam Dann

Directed by Himan Brown Host: E.G. Marshall

This namesake of the famous Nikolai Gogol story deals with the confession of a magistrate to multiple arbitrary homicides.

The law says thou shalt not kill And that's the law most of us openly acknowledge Yet there are other laws, laws and drives that stir primitive long-forgotten urges instincts laws that raise murder from the worst of sins to the most satisfying of deeds.

We condemn and punish the murderer. And yet from time to time, doesn't an entire nation rise up in righteous anger and slaughter another nation? And so, there are those who, naturally enough, ponder the question. If it's noble to kill for one's country at wholesale, why is it base? to kill for oneself at retail. These are the thoughts that occupy the mind of a tall, well-dressed, dignified gentleman. He's walking down a deserted street very late one night in the early summer, some 25 years ago. As he passes a darkened doorway, he hears a gasp.

Starring: Larry Haines, Evie Juster, William Redfield, Robert Dryden

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Original Airdate: March 21, 1974

Episode 0061 "Ordeal by Fire"

Original Story by Murray Burnett Directed by Himan Brown Host: E.G. Marshall

A woman asks her boyfriend to try to help her father who is turning his home into a fortress. He soon finds out his soon-to-be father in law must give $1 million to a cult or be burned to death.

Mark Twain once said, everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it. The same thing might be said of the state of morality in the world today. Everyone talks about immorality and corruption, But no one seems to do anything about it. Can we do anything about it? This is the story of a group who tried, with results like this.

Prometheus' gift of fire to man was a blessing, bringing warmth, cheer, enabling man to cook his food, and also protect him from wild beasts. But along with the benefits came drawbacks. Fire proved to be destructive, and sometimes deadly, and man used it often to destroy. Thus was born the warning, don't play with fire. However, those who created one warning didn't follow their own advice, and they inevitably learned that they should have.

Starring: Julie Newmar, Mandel Kramer, Guy Sorel, Sydney Walker, Earl Hammond