The Evil Touch

- Season 1

(1973)

Arthur Randall's marriage is over - he's in love with his secretary - but his wife refuses to divorce. It's suggested that the couple try and work things out, so they head to their cabin by the lake. While boating, she falls overboard and, after initially trying to save her, Arthur decides he'd be happier if she drowns. He pulls the ring from her finger just as she's going down for the last time; it's this very same ring he intends to give to his secretary.

A wealthy woman who's raised a nephew in luxury has tolerated the insolent young man long enough. She informs the ingrate that she's changing her will to remove him as sole heir to her estate. Before she can act, he intends to exploit her heart condition and pin the murder on "the monster", a crazed killer roaming the countryside. Richard doesn't realize that the aunt is already anticipating his scheme.

In need of new patients, a strange doctor and his even stranger sister resort to robbing graves at a local cemetery.

Former pilot Willie Tremaine, the sole survivor of the airliner he was flying, is visited by the reporter who alleged in print that he was drunk at the controls. Pettit brings with him an obituary of Willie and his wife's death dated for that day. Tremaine becomes frantic, fearing the reporter is there to harm him and his family.

Wheelchair-bound Aunt Carrie is celebrating New Years Eve with her young niece and nephew when she hears gunshots. From her window, she witnesses a murder in an apartment across the courtyard. Carrie and the killer lock eyes, so she knows he's coming for her next. The murderer doesn't realize that, though unable to walk, Aunt Carrie is smarter than he is.

Thomas Sullivan is a respected heart surgeon who clamors for even more recognition. He has the chance to perform a heart transplant on a fellow man of science when a laborer, killed in an automobile accident, is brought in. That man isn't quite as dead as he appears, but Sullivan takes his heart nonetheless and transplants it. Events take an eerie turn when the donor's body disappears and Sullivan begins getting unsettling phone calls.

An actor, Archie MacGauffin, starring in a horror movie is chagrined when he learns that he has managed to summon a real monster to the set of his latest picture.

Roger Carlyle insists his wife Louise look at the fruit press in their basement. He neglects to tell her the stairs have been removed during renovation, causing her to plunge to her death. Jenny, the Carlyles' maid, knows it was murder and begins to blackmail Roger. To regain the upper hand, Roger begins staging "accidents" for himself, hoping to pin them on Jenny.

Wealthy Lily Parkhurst has been living on borrowed time for years thanks to a bad heart. Her greedy cousin and companion Harold rushes her overdue demise with a well-planned poisoning, knowing there will be no autopsy. Harold hadn't planned on the old lady's cockatoo, Radcliffe, being such a blabbermouth about what he's witnessed.

After being a widower for four years, John remarries. He seems to be quite in love with his younger bride Elizabeth, but his teenage daughter Marcie insists the marriage is only to boost John's image in his business. It becomes obvious to Elizabeth that Marcie wants to be the only female in her father's life. Marcie begins to terrorize Elizabeth, who can't get John to see the truth about his daughter. Eventually Elizabeth realizes that she must fight back - with surprising results.

George Manners is awakened one night by his ex-wife Blanche and a man named Hammer who force him at gunpoint to go off with them. Eventually, George escapes from the pair and runs to a police station to tell them his story. The cops find George's story odd; they inform him that Blanche and Hammer died three years earlier.

Constance knows that her much younger husband, Evan, is having an affair with her nurse, and that he's hastily stashed her in the closet. That why she demands that he immediately brick up it up. Not wanting to lose out on his rich wife's money, he does as she says. Constance thinks the nasty little problem is behind them until the supposedly dead nurse starts appearing around the house.

Rip Baker has always been hated in his hometown of Flatt Junction. He leaves to return years later as a rich man. During his his absence, the town has fallen onto hard times and most people have moved away. The few that remain are bitter when Baker refuses to share his fortune with those in community.

A Nobel Prize-winning scientist's recent experiments make him an unwitting accomplice to murder. Professor Jonathan Slater works and manipulates DNA, he is a brilliant scholar. Near his lake house, three people have died under strange circumstances and their bodies were never retrieved.

World-renowned scientist David Zack is trailing his opponent Peter Day in the 2020 presidential campaign. He schemes to use his latest invention, a time machine, to ensure that Day is never born. He sends a humanoid to the past to prevent the man's parents from ever meeting.

Playboy Jonathan Faulkner tries to murder his wealthy grandfather to get at the rich relative's money. The grandfather tells him not to waste his time because he's already knocking on death's door. Soon, the old man passes away and leaves to his greedy grandson the key to his safe. It's accompanied by the warning that the safe contains either a fortune in cash or a bomb.

Popular advice columnist Cora Blake lives in fear knowing the car bomb that killed her husband was meant for her. She informs the police she's going into hiding, not even telling her close friend Harry where she's headed. Isolated at her brother's seaside home, she becomes terrorized by someone who inexplicably knows she's there.

A ruthless developer is put on trial by a group of sideshow freaks. By bulldozing the circus to make way for a condominium, he's destroying the place the "family" calls home--a family he was once part of.

When a actor who usually plays a villain in horror movies finds himself about to become a real-life victim, he learns what its like to be on the bad end of a fright.

Reverend Vincent arrives at a missionary outpost in remote Australian to find everyone missing. Following a series of unexplainable events, he's told that it's the work of a Kadaitcha, an Aboriginal "witch doctor," who's trying to take his soul. The reverend instead believes the hallucinations he once suffered have returned.

Alvin Hazeltine is a man bored with his life who visits the mystical Dr. Gornak who demonstrates an odd device -- a glass prism that reveals the infinite possibilities of every woman. He trains the glass on his boring wife, Selma, and is surprised by what he learns.

A rich couple buys the old sailing ship Endeavor after it spent 70 years in dry dock. Captain Palmer, who's aboard with his wife and another couple, puts everyone on edge with what he reads in the ship's logs. The Endeavor is a malevolent "death ship" that has killed most of the passengers on its previous voyages. The vessel inexplicably shudders, rattles its chains, and charts its own course.

After a night at Coney Island, Edie experiences a vision in which her twin sister Norma is strangled to death by a popular rock star known to be involved in the drug scene. Edie returns home to find the vision is true, and then sets out to stop the murderer.

Escaped murderer Frank Draker and his accomplice dig up the coffin containing stolen jewels he'd buried years earlier. Racing for the border, the men encounter a group of gypsies in the forest. Frank refuses to heed their leader's warning that the golden icon he wants to steal will bring about vengeance. Draker learns the truth when he's forced to face all the souls he has killed.

An eerie cult of children with plans for doing away with adults commit murders in a British seaside town. Dr. Fenton, a lecturer on over-population, and his son are visiting on vacation when they run afoul of the group. Their leader, Lydia, despises the doctor and his message and wants his son as a member of her group.

The Webbers' dream vacation in Central America becomes a nightmare when their son, Scott, disappears off of a rural roadside merry-go-round. The strange couple that runs the attraction are of no help, nor is Police Captain Ortega who soon disappears. Someone who doesn't want them to find their son runs the couple's car off the highway. On foot, they stumble upon a ghost town where they find their son. He's on an altar, about to be sacrificed by a strange bird-worshiping cult.