The Fever
I watched the 17th of 156 Twilight Zone episodes yesterday evening. It aired originally on 29 January 1960, when I was two years old. I must have seen it in rerun, because I remember some of the scenes. It’s about a middle-aged couple from Kansas—Franklin and Flora Gibbs—who end up in Las Vegas as a result of the wife’s winning a contest. Franklin thinks gambling is immoral and stupid, but when an overbearing drunk forces him to put a dollar into a slot machine, which wins 10 dollars, he gets the fever. He spends the evening and following morning gambling, writing check after check for dollar coins to put into the machine. He slowly loses his mind. He thinks the machine is taunting him. When he puts his final dollar in, the machine’s arm won’t go down. Outraged, he pushes the machine over, calling it a monster and other bad names. Security guards escort him out of the casino. When he goes back to his room, not having slept for 24 hours, he tells his wife that the machine is coming after him. As he backs away from it, he falls out the window to his death. As he lies there on the pavement, the machine rolls up and spits out a dollar. Does anyone remember this episode? I enjoyed it.
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