The Ray Bradbury Theater

May 21, 1985

John Raleigh Braling is a computer salesman who receives a cryptic message on his computer screen. Later he receives the same message in a newspaper and on a lunch bill. He tracks down source of the messages and meets a man who offers to sell him a robot replica of himself.

Jun 4, 1985

When Charles Underhill was a boy, he was tormented by neighborhood bullies. When his son begins playing in a local playground, he becomes deeply disturbed when he sees a bully from his youth.

Jul 2, 1985

A neon sign artist named Joe Spelliner is injured in a car crash and sees a crowd of onlookers quickly gather. Days later he sees another car crash and notices that again the same crowd quickly gathers. He begins to investigate a series of accidents and news footage reveals that the same crowd arrives at every scene. What's more, Joe notices that the faces in the crowd match photographs of people at the city morgue.

Feb 22, 1986

A city writer learns a lesson when he takes an idealistic view of rural life, but discovers the truth is far different when he impulsively leaves a train to explore a small town.

Feb 22, 1986

A girl can't convince anyone that she hears a screaming woman buried in the forest near her house.

Feb 22, 1986

An eccentric film director plays pranks on his screenwriter, only to discover the story of a local Banshee is terrifyingly true.

Jan 23, 1988

A hasty murderer tries to wipe off the fingerprints that he left at the crime scene... and realizes the overwhelming nature of his task.

Feb 6, 1988

A hypochondriac goes to a bone specialist for a cure to his latest ailment.

Feb 13, 1988

A lonely, bedridden boy sends his dog on a quest to locate a companion for him.

Feb 20, 1988

A man discovers that his new girlfriend is obsessed with a game called Gotcha!... and will go to any lengths to win.

Mar 5, 1988

An American boy living with his grandmother in Paris for the summer takes an interest in a new boarder.

Apr 9, 1988

A woman is terrorized by her newborn infant.

Apr 16, 1988

A man contracts to have an android made to look exactly like the wife he hates... so he can murder it.

Apr 30, 1988

A nurse gives aid to a ghost on a transcontinental train trip and escorts him to his final destination.

May 7, 1988

An aging inventor builds a custom designed casket as his final creation... and to inflict revenge on a greedy brother.

May 14, 1988

A film animator sculpts a dinosaur for a tyrannical movie producer's latest film, but the man isn't satisfied unless it's the most terrifying beast of all.

May 21, 1988

Elderly Matilda isn't ready to die when Death arrives to carry her off in a wicker basket.

May 28, 1988

A police detective investigates a murder at a theater and questions ventriloquist John Fabian, his wife, and his agent. However, he discovers a fourth witness: Fabian's dummy. Riabouchinska, who has a mind of her own.

Jul 7, 1989

A dwarf uses his writing and the distorted image of a funhouse mirror to escape the prison of his own body, but an evil showman decides to have some fun at the man's expense.

Jul 14, 1989

Two drifters sell views to a desert mirage, a mirage that provides miraculous views, but a rival tries to buy the land and shut them down.

Jul 21, 1989

An artist returns to the lake where years before he had a childhood sweetheart who drowned. Now he must try and bring her back.

Jul 28, 1989

After he learns their secret, a man is followed by violent winds.

Aug 4, 1989

A man's night-time walks are considered subversive in a world of the future.

Aug 11, 1989

Time Safari, Inc., uses time travel to allow big game hunters the ultimate thrill: killing dinosaurs.

Aug 18, 1989

When an unsuccessful author comes to murder him, a famous and prolific writer decides to make things easy for him.

Sep 15, 1989

A man's old flame calls him up and asks him if he wants her manor. The only condition is that the manor has to decide if it wants him.

Sep 22, 1989

In the near future, an old man is sought after for his memories of the past, a past that the government forbids people from remembering.

Sep 29, 1989

Willie, a young boy who cannot grow up, has been spending his life going from family to family, staying for a few years, then leaving before anyone finds out. As he is ready to leave his latest home, he tells his "parents" the story of his life, and of all the people he met in the way.

Nov 10, 1989

Two parents begin to worry when their children's high-tech holographic nursery fixates on a single landscape: an African veldt filled with savage lions.

Nov 17, 1989

A worried father starts to believe that his son's mushroom garden is taking over the neighborhood.

Jul 20, 1990

As the first successful mission to Mars touches down, the men stare through the mists of the Martian dawn and finds something strange: a small town straight out of the American Midwest, filled with their long-lost loved ones.

Jul 27, 1990

Albert Brock loathes noise and prefers perfect silence. He goes around destroying the instruments of sound: radios, wrist watches, faxes, etc. His destruction of sound-infected environments at work and home lands him in a psychiatric institution.

Aug 3, 1990

Two men who theorize that murder only happen in hot weather, try to stop one.

Aug 10, 1990

Hank Walterson sneaks into the carnival at night and watches the owner, Mr. Cooger, ride the Ferris wheel backward until he becomes a young boy... who sets out to rob the local widow of her jewels.

Aug 17, 1990

When the government bans works of fiction, a millionaire rebels and builds a robot haunted house based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe... and plots revenge.

Oct 12, 1990

A man encounters another claiming to be his future self.

Oct 19, 1990

Space explorers on a Martian expedition are faced with problems when one of their members becomes obsessed with the planet's former residents.

Oct 26, 1990

A man time travels to the future and returns to show the people what they have to look forward to.

Nov 2, 1990

The charming Clara Goodwater has been the president of the town's Ladies Honeysuckle Harmony Lodge for as long as anyone can remember. Her nosy rival Elmira Brown is convinced Clara maintains her position through witchcraft and plans to exorcise her at the upcoming Lodge election.

Nov 9, 1990

In a desert town, three old men wait for rain that never comes.

Nov 16, 1990

A family of Earth colonists was stranded on Mars twenty years ago when they missed the order to evacuate. Now, after their long wait, a ship from Earth arrives to take them home, but the rescuers notice something odd.

Nov 30, 1990

Astronauts from Earth land on a remote planet and find a pastoral paradise, where all their wishes come true.

Jan 3, 1992

A crew of a spaceship return to Mars after a 20-year absence to discover a scientist and his family unaffected by their stay.

Jan 10, 1992

In the near future, young children are persuaded to help an imaginary friend named "Drill" to play a game called "Invasion".

Jan 17, 1992

A farmer impresses the townsfolk with a mysterious jar bought from a traveling carnival sideshow.

Jan 24, 1992

A boy and a neighbor invent a fake mummy to stir up the townspeople and relieve the boredom of the last days of summer.

Jan 31, 1992

A Martian's reluctance to attack Earth stems from what he read in his alien comic books.

Feb 7, 1992

As a boy, piano prodigy, Douglas, was tormented by a gang of bullies, led by Ralph. Now, fifty years later, Doug looks for closure in his life, by traveling back to his hometown and getting his revenge.

Feb 14, 1992

After witnessing a student's accidental death because of bullying, a teacher vows to put children in their place but they plan to do the same to him.

Feb 21, 1992

A Martian welcomes grieving parents who move to Mars.

Jul 10, 1992

After discovering the body of the latest victim of the serial killer known as The Lonely One, Lavinia persuades her friends to go to the movies to take their minds off the tragedy. The result is a long, scary midnight walk home for the increasingly terrified Lavinia.

Jul 17, 1992

A family man, incorrigible dreamer and small-town inventor is inspired to build a machine that can create happiness. However, his wife makes him realize the irony of such concept.

Aug 14, 1992

An experimental childbirth procedure results in a couple's baby being born into another dimension. The child's non-human appearance puts a lot of strain on the new parents and threatens to send the wife into madness.

Aug 21, 1992

An American author on a visit to Dublin stops by a pub where he is caught up in the excitement over a local sporting event known as "anthem sprinting." In this challenge runners compete to see who can get out of the theater fastest during the pause between the end of the film and the start of the Irish national anthem and this time the stakes are the American's first edition of Joyce versus the pub's Sean O'Casey autographed playbill.

Sep 11, 1992

The manager of a hotel pool drills his young son with military precision, leading to tragedy.

Sep 19, 1992

When an army spaceship crash lands on a world where it never stops raining, the four survivors try to reach the Sundome that has been erected on the planet and provides the only shelter. But exhaustion hits and predatory plants await.

Sep 26, 1992

A lonely middle-aged woman moves to a small town to take a job as a manicurist and finds she is strangely drawn to local eccentric Odd Martin--who claims to be dead.

Oct 3, 1992

An American film crew arrives in a Mexican village to shoot a TV commercial; Ricardo, a townsman, interferes with the filming because he resents his life being treated as a colorful prop by these arrogant interlopers.

Oct 10, 1992

A technician accidentally stranded on Mars by a sudden evacuation searches desperately for another human being on the desolate world. When he finds an equally lonely woman, she is not what he was expecting.

Oct 17, 1992

Walter Bayes has devoted his life to creating a robot duplicate of Abraham Lincoln to inspire the American people to recommit themselves to the nation's ideals. On the night of its unveiling, however, a maniac named Booth plots to assassinate the Presidential automaton.

Oct 24, 1992

A young couple falls in love but his domineering mother comes between them; when the old woman finally dies--forty years later--the next step is not very clear.

Oct 27, 1992

A small town mortician takes a perverse delight in exacting postmortem revenge against his enemies, until his day of reckoning arrives.

Oct 28, 1992

A vicious prankster convinces his wife's mean old grandmother that he is planning to kill her and her pets and grind them up in the new garbage disposal that he bought for her.

Oct 29, 1992

Cora Gibbs is an illiterate woman living on an isolated farm with her much older husband. When her educated nephew Benjy visits for the summer, she sees her opportunity to connect with the "great wide world over there" by sending and receiving mail.

Oct 30, 1992

A bickering couple checks into the last available room in a small hotel only to discover that the previous occupant left a tombstone in the room. No one gets any sleep as the wife is now convinced the room is haunted.