Stephen King Calls One THE TWILIGHT ZONE Episode - “The Most Terrifying 19-Minutes Ever Put on Television”

For someone who has spent a lifetime terrifying readers and audiences, you’d think it would take a lot to rattle Stephen King. That’s why one particular segment from The Twilight Zone stands out in his long relationship with horror. Out of decades of adaptations and countless spooky TV moments, there’s one episode that even King admitted scared him to his core.

That episode is The Twilight Zone installment titled “Gramma”, which aired on February 14, 1986, during the show’s 1980s revival. The story is based on King’s short fiction and adapted for television by Harlan Ellison, resulting in an unsettling 19-minutes of slow-building dread that crawls under your skin.

The episode centers on Georgie, an 11-year-old boy played by Barret Oliver, best known for The NeverEnding Story and D.A.R.Y.L.. Georgie has been left alone for the afternoon to care for his bedridden grandmother while his mother, portrayed by Darlanne Fluegel, steps out.

The task seems simple enough. Gramma doesn’t move much and mostly calls out from her room asking for tea, but Georgie is absolutely terrified of her.

Gramma is voiced by Piper Laurie and physically portrayed by Frederick Long, and even before anything overtly supernatural happens, the episode drips with unease.

Georgie’s inner monologue carries much of the tension as he reflects on disturbing family rumors, including memories of stillborn children and unsettling thoughts he’d rather ignore. The house feels wrong, and Gramma’s unseen presence looms over every moment.

Things spiral into full nightmare territory when Georgie accidentally spills her tea and notices a crack in the floor. Curious and already shaken, he pries up the boards and discovers a cold-burning, hellish opening beneath the house.

Inside is the Necronomicon. Georgie attempts to read from it, completely out of his depth. “What’s a ‘Cthulhu?’” he wonders, unknowingly opening the door to something far worse than childhood fear.

The climax doesn’t pull punches. Georgie finally approaches Gramma’s bed and discovers she’s transformed into a grotesque creature. She grabs him, presses him into her bloated, monstrous body, and absorbs him as he screams.

When his mother returns home, Georgie appears fine and hugs her, saying he was scared and that Gramma has died. Then he looks directly into the camera, revealing the same glowing red, cat-like eyes Gramma once had.

In Ian Nathan’s 2019 book Stephen King at the Movies: A Complete History of the Film and Television Adaptations from the Master of Horror, King praised the episode. He called Gramma “the most terrifying 19 minutes ever put on television.”

King has famously taken issue with some high-profile adaptations of his work, so when he singles out a television episode as genuinely frightening, it means something went very right.

What makes this even more interesting is that Gramma is the only time one of King’s stories was ever adapted for any version of The Twilight Zone. King has long been a devoted fan of Rod Serling’s original 1959 series and discussed that love in The Twilight Zone Companion by Marc Scott Zicree.

When the show was revived in 1985, it seemed inevitable that King would be involved more than once. But, it never happened again.

Behind the scenes, Gramma almost didn’t work at all. According to the DVD commentary, writers on the show were hesitant to tackle the story because so much of it relied on Georgie’s internal thoughts.

They worried it would translate into little more than a dull voiceover. But the producers had already spent serious money licensing a Stephen King story and weren’t about to abandon it. Ellison was brought in and turned it into something nightmarish and visual, proving everyone else wrong.

The creature design definitly leaves a lasting impression. Gramma is only briefly shown, but her bulging eyes, broken teeth, and swollen cheeks are more than enough. Oliver, who usually shines as a confident young hero, leans fully into vulnerability here, playing a kid trapped in a house with someone he knows is wrong but can’t escape.

Also, William Friedkin was originally set to direct Gramma but had to step away for personal reasons. He had previously directed another Twilight Zone episode, “Nightcrawlers”, which aired on October 18, 1985, and featured Exene Cervenka of the band X as a waitress.

Decades later, Gramma still stands as one of the most disturbing pieces of The Twilight Zone’s entire run.