"The Ordeal of Dr. Cordell" stars Robert Vaughn as research scientist Frank Cordell, assisted by fiancee Lois Walker (Kathleen Crowley), who comes unglued after an experiment backfires, his gas mask unable to protect him from an explosive dose in a freak accident. At first he registers no pulse, but an injection of adrenaline from university employer Dr. Brauner (Robert Ellenstein) restores him to normal consciousness, except for the tinkle of even the smallest bell, amplified to such an extent that he is compulsively driven to kill, from an innocent little caged parakeet to not one but two unlucky campus coeds. Unaware of his actions during these raging blackouts, he soon finds evidence of his crimes in his jacket pocket, yet loses sympathy with the viewer by his failure to confess and insistence on recreating the gas to find a cure for his brain's chemical imbalance. John Brahm's "Hangover Square" covered this territory better with Laird Cregar, here we have Donald S. Sanford contributing one of his numerous scripts, the sole episode directed by veteran Laslo Benedek. William Castle's 1972 GHOST STORY episode "Elegy for a Vampire" cast future Barney Miller Hal Linden as a similarly tortured campus professor responsible for his share of coed corpses. Robert Vaughn is perhaps the wrong actor for this part, only the 4th TV role for a young Marlo Thomas (THAT GIRL), and the first credit for Aron Kincaid under his real name Norm Williams, later a Beach Party staple in "The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini" and Larry Buchanan's "Creature of Destruction."