This was one of those episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE that were shown on Friday, July 4th on the Science Fiction Station. The episode dealt with a classic horror tale that keeps going around the world as urban myth, and will probably still be doing so 100 years from now, along with the alligators in our urban sewers.
Barbara Nichols is Liz Powers, a successful nightclub dancer-performer, whose agent Barney (Fredd Wayne) has just signed her up for a nice new gig in Miami. But she is suffering from overwork, and needs bed rest. While in the hospital she starts having a recurring nightmare where she is aware that it is dark as night, but the clock reads 8:10 P.M. She hears nothing. She reaches for a glass of water and it falls and breaks. No nurse comes in so she goes out to investigate. She sees a nurse all the way down the hall going into a room. She follows and finds it is the hospital morgue. The nurse (Arlene Martel) reappears and faces her with an attractive but sinister face. "Room for one more honey?", she says. Nichols feeling she is confronting great evil lets out a piercing scream, and the next thing she knows she is being held down by another nurse and the hospital doctor (Jonathan Harris) on her bed.
This happens three nights in a row. Harris tries to reassure Nichols that there is no reason for her to have this fear - he shows her the night nurse (Norma Connelly), who does not look at all like the figure in the dream. Nichols really is not convinced, and finds that her agent is not really good in helping her feel any sense of relief either. Then Harris suggests something to Nichols. In all three of her dreams the pattern remained the same - vary it: Don't reach for the glass of water.
Nichols, still dubious, goes to bed, and again, at 8:10 P.M. she wakes. She almost reaches for the glass, but remembers what Harris suggested. Instead she decides to smoke a cigarette instead. But in putting the lighter down on the table, she knocks over the glass again. She decides to see if her varying the situation has any effect. She walks down the hall, and again the entire dream plays out with the sinister nurse. She is seen screaming as Harris gives her a sedative injection. But in the course of her screaming she does say something that Harris is puzzled about. She mentions "22", and Harris knows of a Room 22 that the patients never see.
SPOILER COMING UP:
Nichols leaves the next day. She is looking forward to the Miami gig. She reaches the airport and is given her ticket, and then learns that she is booked on flight 22. This is unsettling, as is the fact she notices the time is now 8:10 P.M. She walks somewhat unsteadily and knocks into a woman carrying a vase with flowers, which she causes to fall and break. Suddenly Nichols is really getting frightened, as key events of that dream seem to be reoccurring in a different setting. An airport employee points out that her plane is getting ready to leave. Nichols stumbles down to the ramp up to the plane's entrance, and a stewardess is there - it is Martel, and smiling the same way she asks, "Room for one more honey?" Nichols screams and runs down the ramp and back to the main building of the airport.
A moment later the plane bursts into flames before a horrified Nichols and the others in the building.
TWENTY TWO was one of six TWILIGHT ZONE episodes that were shot on video tape, and it certainly adds an "odd dimension" to the viewing pleasure of it. Because of the fuzzy quality of the episode's appearance it makes the turmoil of Nichols' apparent mental breakdown more effective. But it also reminds us of the live television that was so much a part of the 1950s, and of which so much is now lost or missing. In particular watching Nichols deepening fears get realized, and the growing uncertainty of the intelligent skeptical Harris, we are lucky to see them almost as if they were freshly performing in front of us. Wayne too is good as a nice fellow who really can't make out what is going on with his client and friend, but blunderingly keeps trying to move on. And Martel does the most with her limited appearances in the episode.
The episode was based on an anecdote that Bennett Cerf put into one of his anthologies. But it may seem familiar to viewers of the film DEAD OF NIGHT, when in the first episode of the film a racing car driver is recovering in a hospital and has a recurring nightmare where he awakes at a given time, looks out the window and sees a hearse driven by Miles Mander dressed as an undertaker, who looks up at the patient and says, "Only room for one more, Sir!" In the end the racer, after he leaves the hospital, almost boards a double decker bus and sees the conductor is Mander, repeating, "Only room for one more, Sir!". Wisely he does not board, and watches in horror as the bus (in avoiding a collision) falls off a bridge. I have seen the anecdote appear in collections of "odd but true" books frequently. I don't care if it is really a false story - it is a damned good one.
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