The Fever (The Twilight Zone)
| "The Fever" | |
|---|---|
| The Twilight Zone episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 17 |
| Directed by | Robert Florey |
| Written by | Rod Serling |
| Featured music | Stock (taken primarily from Jerry Goldsmith's "jazz themes", which are used as incidental music on many other Twilight Zones, and Rene Garriguenc's "Street Moods In Jazz") |
| Production code | 173-3627 |
| Original air date | January 29, 1960 |
| Guest appearance(s) | |
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"The Fever" is episode seventeen of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on January 29, 1960 on CBS.
Franklin and his wife Flora go to Las Vegas because she won a slogan contest. He detests gambling, but his wife is excited about their vacation. Franklin is given a coin by a drunk man at the casino, who makes Franklin use it in a slot machine. He wins and tells his wife that they should keep the winnings and not lose it back like the other people.
As they depart, Franklin believes he hears the slot machine calling his name. He continues to hear this as he tries to sleep. He gets out of bed, telling his wife he cannot keep "tainted" money, and that he is going to get rid of it by putting it back in the machine. Later, Flora goes to the casino and finds him playing the machine obsessively. Addicted, Franklin has lost a great deal of their money. When Flora tries to coax him to stop, Franklin declares that he has lost so much, that he has to try to win some of it back. He becomes enraged when she presses for him to leave, declaring that the machine is "inhuman", that it "teases you, sucks you in." Others observe that he has been playing the machine for hours.
When Franklin puts his last dollar into the machine, it malfunctions and will not spin. Franklin begins yelling and pushes the machine over. He is taken out of the casino screaming. Later in bed, Franklin tells Flora that the machine was about to pay off, but deliberately broke down so that it would not have to give him his money. He then hears the machine again calling his name. To his horror, he sees the slot machine coming down the hallway towards their room, chasing him, but Flora cannot see it. The machine hounds him towards the window, repeating his name over and over. He crashes through the glass and falls to his death. The police stand over his body, noting that his wife had stated that he had not slept in 24 hours. A casino manager comments that he's "seen a lot of 'em get hooked before, but never like him." The last scene shows Franklin's last dollar rolling up and spinning out flat near his outstretched, dead hand. The camera pans over to where the coin came and there sits the slot machine, "smiling" at him.
In Serling: The Rise and Twilight of Television's Last Angry Man, Gordon F. Sander wrote, "Serling celebrated the signing of his new show, The Twilight Zone by spending a weekend in Las Vegas. While Carol Serling was having good luck nearby, he became enslaved by a merciless one-armed bandit, an incident he would turn into one of his first Twilight Zone episodes."
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