While Brandon is in his West Indies living room harrumphing with his cronies, his young hot wife Sheila is trying on the wedding gown that he has insisted she wear. She tells the butler, “If Mr. Brandon wants me to be in white, I could have dazzled them with my naked body and a garland of pale roses,” thus producing the best line of Night Gallery dialogue in 3 years.
The gathering is humming along very Britishly until it is crashed by Sheila’s ex-boyfriend Raphael. As she is descending the stairs, they lock eyes and she stops. Raphael insists that Sheila belongs to him and it takes her only seconds to agree.
She tells her husband that somehow she belongs to Raphael and has since her first breath. Although seconds before, it seemed to have started the night he banged her. Nonsensically, she runs off with Raphael leaving Brandon humiliated at his wedding party.
The only black man (besides the butler) shows up, which by Night Gallery rules, means he must be a voodoo master. Brandon pays him off for a voodoo doll of Raphael.
The next day while Raphael and Sheila are frolicking on his boat, Raphael experiences an 
attack that is not quite identifiable. What is identifiable are the giant hand prints which have left red marks the size of his back. Rather than use the traditional needles on his voodoo doll, Brandon is throttling it in his hands, attempting to squeeze the doll and Raphael to death. Lucky this is pre-CSI or he would have left some nice 10-inch fingerprints as evidence.
That night, Sheila calls Brandon to see if his doctor will come. The doctor says, Raphael’s had some kind of attack. She’s hysterical, she claims he’s been murdered — and contends Brandon is the culprit.
The doctor goes to Raphael’s boat, but he is still alive. She tries to convince the doctor that Brandon is at fault. The night before their wedding, Brandon took her to see a voodoo priest.
Sheila runs to Brandon’s house. She searches for the voodoo doll, but is caught by Brandon. She claims to have seen the error of her ways, but Brandon sees through that. He shows her the doll which has a few strands of Raphael’s hair, a few nail clippings, a swatch of his clothing, and a teeeeeny little mustache in order to make the psychic connection.
She takes the doll and begs him not to do anything further, but he grabs the doll and slams it on the edge of the table. Ah, but the nimble little minx has added Brandon’s ring to the doll, so he falls over dead with a broken neck. Raphael and Sheila are reunited.
Strangely enough, even though the doll still had Raphael’s hair, mails clothes and mustache, the ring seems to trump all that, so Raphael is unharmed.
Post-Post:
- Twilight Zone Legacy: Barry Atwater was in the classic The Monsters are Due on Maple Street. Murray Matheson was in the classic Five Characters in Search of an Exit and the mediocre TZ Movie.
Generally speaking, when Serling uses voodoo as a device (especially of revenge), the afflicted is guilty of some crime or transgression, and so the perpetrator of its use is justified in his/her actions (see: The Diary, The Doll, et al). Here, a woman who obviously lost her virginity to Rafael is not only marrying another man (likely for his money and prestige), but then leaves her fiancé at the altar when her rogue of a boyfriend reappears to, in his words, “take what’s mine.”
So, who wouldn’t employ a little voodoo to take out his nemesis? And yet, Sheila has the last word when she sneaks back into her (former) fiancé’s home to plant his ring on the “doll of death”, and they all live (save for Brandon) happily ever after? What??? If there was some exposition prior to explain Rafael’s abandonment of Sheila, and subsequent reunion (ie: Brandon paid him off to leave the island, or had authorities incarcerate him for some trumped up charge), at least then I could have empathy for the young lovers. But no such exposition (or explanation) is given.
Seems to me that having Sheila wear white at her (almost) marriage to Brandon would be seen as blasphemous in anyone’s moral playbook, yet she is the protagonist? Ah, no. She’s both a conniver and a slut. Brandon deserves his revenge, so how come he is denied it? Also, in a scene prior to the nuptials, we see Sheila put on a scarf which has the ring attached to it like a broche, but then she decides against the look, and takes it off. Yet she still has the ring on her person days later? Hmmmm. Now that’s what I call suspension of disbelief.