A British literary critic and his family visit the Villa Diodati in Switzerland, where, decades earlier, Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein". Events indicate that perhaps the famous story was not just a work of imagination...
This was a powerfully effective episode, filled with an atmosphere of dread and a kind of sickly nastiness - there is something very wrong with this seemingly conventional British family even before they start sensing that something genuinely awful happened in the villa, long ago. The arrival of some entertainers in the nearby village - they do a show every year, they have done for decades, they did one in 1816 when Mary Shelley was staying locally - unleashes horror. One of the giant-sized marionettes bears an unmistakable resemblance to the popular image of Frankenstein's monster, and is alarmingly lifelike. The episode makes superb use of the creepy-voiced Polish actor Vladek Sheybal, whose large eyes and chilling smile made him a fine movie villain in "From Russia With Love", "The Wind And The Lion" and other films; the British literary scholar is played by Gordon Jackson and his unhappy wife is Kathleen Byron, of "Black Narcissus" fame. (TV.com)