The Ray Bradbury Theater
A Canadian-produced fantastic anthology series scripted by famed science-fiction author Ray Bradbury. Many of the teleplays were based upon Bradbury's novels and short stories.
Seasons
1. Marionettes, Inc.
Air Date: 1985-05-21
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.
2. The Playground
Air Date: 1985-06-04
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.
3. The Crowd
Air Date: 1985-07-02
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.
1. The Town Where No One Got Off
Air Date: 1986-02-22
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.
2. The Screaming Woman
Air Date: 1986-02-22
A girl can't convince anyone that she hears a screaming woman buried in the forest near her house.
3. Banshee
Air Date: 1986-02-22
An eccentric film director plays pranks on his screenwriter, only to discover the story of a local Banshee is terrifyingly true.
1. The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl
Air Date: 1988-01-23
A hasty murderer tries to wipe off the fingerprints that he left at the crime scene... and realizes the overwhelming nature of his task.
2. Skeleton
Air Date: 1988-02-06
A hypochondriac goes to a bone specialist for a cure to his latest ailment.
3. The Emissary
Air Date: 1988-02-13
A lonely, bedridden boy sends his dog on a quest to locate a companion for him.
4. Gotcha!
Air Date: 1988-02-20
A man discovers that his new girlfriend is obsessed with a game called Gotcha!... and will go to any lengths to win.
5. The Man Upstairs
Air Date: 1988-03-05
An American boy living with his grandmother in Paris for the summer takes an interest in a new boarder.
6. The Small Assassin
Air Date: 1988-04-09
A woman is terrorized by her newborn infant.
7. Punishment Without Crime
Air Date: 1988-04-16
A man contracts to have an android made to look exactly like the wife he hates... so he can murder it.
8. On the Orient, North
Air Date: 1988-04-30
A nurse gives aid to a ghost on a transcontinental train trip and escorts him to his final destination.
9. The Coffin
Air Date: 1988-05-07
An aging inventor builds a custom designed casket as his final creation... and to inflict revenge on a greedy brother.
10. Tyrannosaurus Rex
Air Date: 1988-05-14
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.
11. There Was an Old Woman
Air Date: 1988-05-21
Elderly Matilda isn't ready to die when Death arrives to carry her off in a wicker basket.
12. And So Died Riabouchinska
Air Date: 1988-05-28
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.
1. The Dwarf
Air Date: 1989-07-07
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.
2. A Miracle of Rare Device
Air Date: 1989-07-14
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.
3. The Lake
Air Date: 1989-07-21
An artist returns to the lake where years before he had a childhood sweetheart who drowned. Now he must try and bring her back.
4. The Wind
Air Date: 1989-07-28
After he learns their secret, a man is followed by violent winds.
5. The Pedestrian
Air Date: 1989-08-04
A man's night-time walks are considered subversive in a world of the future.
6. A Sound of Thunder
Air Date: 1989-08-11
Time Safari, Inc., uses time travel to allow big game hunters the ultimate thrill: killing dinosaurs.
7. The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone
Air Date: 1989-08-18
When an unsuccessful author comes to murder him, a famous and prolific writer decides to make things easy for him.
8. The Haunting of the New
Air Date: 1989-09-15
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.
9. To the Chicago Abyss
Air Date: 1989-09-22
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.
10. Hail and Farewell
Air Date: 1989-09-29
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.
11. The Veldt
Air Date: 1989-11-10
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.
12. Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms In Your Cellar!
Air Date: 1989-11-17
A worried father starts to believe that his son's mushroom garden is taking over the neighborhood.
1. Mars Is Heaven
Air Date: 1990-07-20
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.
2. The Murderer
Air Date: 1990-07-27
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.
3. Touched with Fire
Air Date: 1990-08-03
Two men who theorize that murder only happen in hot weather, try to stop one.
4. The Black Ferris
Air Date: 1990-08-10
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.
5. Usher II
Air Date: 1990-08-17
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.
6. Touch of Petulance
Air Date: 1990-10-12
A man encounters another claiming to be his future self.
7. And the Moon Be Still as Bright
Air Date: 1990-10-19
Space explorers on a Martian expedition are faced with problems when one of their members becomes obsessed with the planet's former residents.
8. The Toynbee Convector
Air Date: 1990-10-26
A man time travels to the future and returns to show the people what they have to look forward to.
9. Exorcism
Air Date: 1990-11-02
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.
10. The Day It Rained Forever
Air Date: 1990-11-09
In a desert town, three old men wait for rain that never comes.
11. The Long Years
Air Date: 1990-11-16
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.
12. Here There Be Tygers
Air Date: 1990-11-30
Astronauts from Earth land on a remote planet and find a pastoral paradise, where all their wishes come true.
1. The Earthmen
Air Date: 1992-01-03
A crew of a spaceship return to Mars after a 20-year absence to discover a scientist and his family unaffected by their stay.
2. Zero Hour
Air Date: 1992-01-10
In the near future, young children are persuaded to help an imaginary friend named "Drill" to play a game called "Invasion".
3. The Jar
Air Date: 1992-01-17
A farmer impresses the townsfolk with a mysterious jar bought from a traveling carnival sideshow.
4. Colonel Stonesteel and the Desperate Empties
Air Date: 1992-01-24
A boy and a neighbor invent a fake mummy to stir up the townspeople and relieve the boredom of the last days of summer.
5. The Concrete Mixer
Air Date: 1992-01-31
A Martian's reluctance to attack Earth stems from what he read in his alien comic books.
6. The Utterly Perfect Murder
Air Date: 1992-02-07
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.
7. Let's Play Poison
Air Date: 1992-02-14
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.
8. The Martian
Air Date: 1992-02-21
A Martian welcomes grieving parents who move to Mars.
9. The Lonely One
Air Date: 1992-07-10
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.
10. The Happiness Machine
Air Date: 1992-07-17
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.
11. Tomorrow's Child
Air Date: 1992-08-14
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.
12. The Anthem Sprinters
Air Date: 1992-08-21
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.
13. By the Numbers
Air Date: 1992-09-11
The manager of a hotel pool drills his young son with military precision, leading to tragedy.
14. The Long Rain
Air Date: 1992-09-19
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.
15. The Dead Man
Air Date: 1992-09-26
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.
16. Sun and Shadow
Air Date: 1992-10-03
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.
17. Silent Towns
Air Date: 1992-10-10
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.
18. Downwind from Gettysburg
Air Date: 1992-10-17
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.
19. Some Live Like Lazarus
Air Date: 1992-10-24
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.
20. The Handler
Air Date: 1992-10-27
A small town mortician takes a perverse delight in exacting postmortem revenge against his enemies, until his day of reckoning arrives.
21. Fee Fie Foe Fum
Air Date: 1992-10-28
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.
22. Great Wide World Over There
Air Date: 1992-10-29
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.
23. The Tombstone
Air Date: 1992-10-30
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.
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Rating
6.9/10
Release Date
1985-05-21
Episodes
65 (6 seasons)
Status
Ended
Cast
Production Companies
Alberta Filmworks
Atlantis Films