There are four separate stories packed into this episode's fifty-one minutes, so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that at least one of them sucks. The worst offender is tale number two which lasts just a few minutes and is essentially a one joke piece: a vampire enters a blood bank... to make a withdrawal. Badum-tish! For all I know, this might have been a new joke back in '71, but I've seen it printed in comics so many times over the years that it no longer has the desired effect.
Before this, we get a story starring Patty Duke and Virginia Mayo. Duke plays Holly Schaeffer, television's foremost 'hatchet lady', who uses her gossip show to make cruel comments about washed-up movie star Carrie Crane (Mayo). Crashing Schaeffer's New Year's Eve party (which features a dwarf in a nappy as the 'new year baby'), Crane delivers a gift to the cruel woman: a diary. After Crane leaves, Schaeffer opens the journal to find that the first page is already filled in, in her handwriting, and that it predicts Crane's suicide. Sure enough, the actress throws herself in front of a car moments later.
The next day, and there is another mysterious diary entry which foretells of the death of Schaeffer's one true love, Jeb (Robert Yuro); later that day, Jeb dies in an accident. On the third day, there is no entry, which leads Holly to believe that she is going to die. Her sanity slipping, she has herself committed for her own safety, living the rest of her days in a padded room, trying to beat the diary by completing the entries herself. I can't say I liked this one all that much, but that's not to say it's bad - just not my cup of tea. Look out for a young Lindsay 'Bionic Woman' Wagner as a nurse.
The third story is a bit of a weird one: John Carradine plays a creepy old man who tells young lad Chris (Vincent Van Patten) where he can find 'a big surprise'. Together with his friends, Chris goes to the location that the man told him about and starts to dig. The two friends eventually give up and wander off, but Chris continues until he finds a wooden box secured with a padlock. It's a creepy set-up, but the 'big surprise' waiting for the boy inside the box is just plain bizarre.
The last story is a lot of fun for fans of Lovecraft, and might even have been a source of inspiration for a young Sam Raimi: the brilliant Carl Reiner plays a Miskatonic University professor lecturing on the subject of superstition and ancient cults. As he recites from a copy of the Necronomicon (as in The Evil Dead), he mocks the 'great old ones', incurring their wrath, the man eventually transformed into an unspeakable monster. There are numerous Lovecraft references, Reiner hams it up a treat, and the ending is wonderfully silly. Now this one WAS my cup of tea!
