Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

28. The Caterpillar
gs: Laurence Harvey (Stephen Macy) Joanna Pettet (Rhona Warwick) John Williams (II) (Doctor)

https://www.sffworld.com/forum/threads/please-help-me-id-this-old-tv-show.10150/

A bored colonial on a Malaysian plantation employs an exotic accomplice--an earwig--in his gruesome plot to assassinate a romantic rival.

b: 01-Mar-1972 pc: 34322 w: Rod Serling s: Oscar Cook d: Jeannot Szwarc

NOTE: This episode is based on the short story "Boomerang" by Oscar Cook. This story was first published in the Christine Campbell Thomson anthology Switch on the Light (1931).

I found this comment also. I'm glad I'm not the only one. I'd forgotten the end twist...ack! now I'll never sleep! (bolds are mine)

"Several shows that, if you saw them as a child, have stuck in your head for years. I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned "The Caterpillar"; Laurence Harvey (maybe his best performance ever) played a scoundrel wishing to kill an older gentleman to make a move on his much younger and very hot wife (played by Joanna Pettit).

His scheme? A hybrid caterpillar (called an "earwig") would be inserted into the man's ear during sleep; the hybrid would be unable to "back up" and therefore would eat its way through the man's brain! Harvey falls afoul of his own scheme when a mistake is made, yet miraculously survives the creature's 2+ week journey across his head when it somehow finds its way out the other ear.

THEN he learns that the earwig was a female, and had laid eggs in his brain! THIS one scared me as much as any episode of the Twilight Zone, Outer Limits or anything else you want to name."