TODAY'S BOO TUBE: THE THIRTY FATHOM GRAVE

I'VE CHOSEN ONE OF THE HOUR TWILIGHT ZONES FOR TODAY'S VIEWING.  This is an episode I've always loved since I first saw it sometime in the early 80s.  We didn't see much of the hour-length TWILIGHT ZONES back in the day; syndication always played the half hour shows.  However, this has always been my favourite of that single hour-long season:  "THE THIRTY-FATHOM GRAVE". 

It's a particularly creepy episode in which a U.S. Navy destroyer in 1963 sailing off Guadalcanal picks up the sound of metallic hammering on sonar.  They soon discover the sound is coming from a sunken submarine.  Investigation proves that no sub has gone down in the recent past and that, in fact, the wreck occurred 21 years earlier at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons.  Divers from the Navy destroyer go down and listen at the hull and hear a definite hammering from inside the sunken sub.  No one could possibly be alive inside so is it the ghosts of the dead crew?  It's soon discovered that the nervous Chief Bell, who has been feeling ill for days, once served on that very submarine and due to an accidental screw-up caused the Japanese to detect and sink the sub resulting in the death of the entire crew EXCEPT Chief Bell.  Are the ghosts of the sunken submarine seeking vengeance from beyond their watery grave?  A typically fine cast headed by Simon Oakland and Bill Bixby as well as a suitably jittery performance by Mike Kellin as Chief Bell amps up the feeling of unease.  There's nothing like watery ghosts for optimal Halloween viewing!