Pat Buttram (he was Mr. Haney on Green Acres) brings a macabre twist to his standard country-bumpkin characterization in this bone-chilling episode. Visiting a traveling carnival, farmer Charlie Hill (Buttram) is fascinated by one of the exhibits: a huge jar, filled with water and mysterious floating objects. Convinced that the jar possesses magical qualities, Charlie purchases the object and brings it home, putting it on display for his friends and neighbors -- who are equally fascinated, even mesmerized, by the jar's eerie "properties." All of this brouhaha annoys Charlie's promiscuous young wife, Thedy Sue (Collin Wilcox), who plans to expose the jar as a fake and humiliate Charlie in public just before running off with her current boyfriend. James Bridges earned an Emmy nomination for his adaptation of Ray Bradbury's short story The Jar, which also boasts an appropriately eerie minimalist musical score by frequent Alfred Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann.
by Hal Erickson
synopsis
