This episode can be found on Disc 2 of SWV's THE VEIL double-disc set along with "The Black Hand."

At the story's intro, Lon Chaney Jr is potting a plant and giving us a fairly decent introduction to the story.   For the first time in the series episode available, I felt pity for him.  Despite his haphazard looks and the mixed blessing of a famous father, the younger Chaney certainly could have been a star in his own right on radio.   He has a very good and deep voice that is articulate and implies pathos and a variety of emotions.  Of course, he also practically invented pathos with his landmark portrayal of The Wolf Man.

That said, it still doesn't excuse him from the last two episodes.

"Vine of Death" begins with Frank Dylan (pronounced Die-Land for some goofy reason) as a botany professor at a Copenhagen museum.   After a discovery of a fossilized Mirada vine--the Death Vine--is discovered, Frank plants some bulbs in his own personal hothouse at home to see if it grows.   While he does this, his neighbor Wally is fixing the sink and hitting on Frank's unresponsive wife, Terry.   Terry tells him to bug off and Wally does after Frank walks in.    I can see why Terry hates Wally so much:  first, his name is Wally.  Second,  he looks like a very young Nosferatu who takes fashion tips from Jonathan Harris during the second season of Lost in Space.

The next day, Frank receives another Mirada blub from the director and asks for the day off to plant it and give it care to see if it grows.   The director does so without hesitation, making me wish I had bosses that caring and/or naive.  'Sure, you can go home for the day to write three reviews about a crappy aired-in-Sweden anthology show featuring Lon Chaney, Zbu, go to it!'

Yeah, then I wake up.

Frank comes home and before he can plant his newfound discovery,  he walks in on Terry and Wally having a fight.  Terry wants Frank to kick out the obviously-horny lounge lizard while Wally is trying to tell Frank 'all about them.'   This is a erroneous part of information:  who the hell would ever be interested in a foreign guy (whose accent is so indisguishable I almost think it's a vague racial insult against somebody) who wears an ascot and is this close to getting kicked off the Jupiter 2?   A fight ensues when Terry grabs a knife, goes at Wally who misdirects the blade into Frank.   Frank falls to the ground and Terry calls an ambulance and aside from a inexplicably large hospital bill, Frank is fine and....

Oh, wait.  This is the 1950s when a knife wound to the stomach is immediately fatal.  Oops!  So, instead of calling the cops or help to assist her husband and get Wally,  Terry lets her stupid ass get talked into burying Frank in the hothouse by the same man who essentially killed him:  Wally.    Let's try to find the logic in this....the man who killed your husband by taking the knife away from you tells you that you are just as guilty because your fingerprints are on the knife?!    Please!  If anything, this jackass would be doubly damned because:

1)  He's in your house and you didn't want him there,

2) He was trying to assault you in  sexual manner,

3)  And he was merely saying that so that Terry didn't call the police, which is not what he wanted.

Sadly, the liner notes make this story out to be a 'affair found out, husband killed and seeks revenge' tale.    It isn't the case.  Being the clod she is, Terry goes along with it and Wally buries Frank in the hothouse, the new Mirada bulb still in his hand.  In the history of the world, nobody has ever buried a body in a garden and the police would never look there, right?  Ugh.

The next day, a detective shows up at the museum and inquires about Frank's disappearance, which leads him to Terry's house where Wally is still hanging about, trying to talk Terry from leaving town to escape the heat.   You know, because she's obviously so guilty unlike him?!   Anyway, the detective brings one of Frank's co-workers to the house for no reason besides exposition and they search the hothouse only to find that the new Mirada bulb has started to grow.   This surprises the hell out of Wally and Terry and they kick the detective and co-worker out.  Terry tells them she will wait for Frank no matter how long it takes.

A while later, Wally is still hanging around the house and getting plastered.  Terry tells him to bug off again as he tries to make a pass at her and she goes to sleep.   With a man who wanted to molest her still in the freaking house.   You know, this is the point where I gave up on Terry.  It is necessary to have sympathy for a character in this situation and with her stupidity, it's hard to even care if she gets away.  This is the point where I was fighting off sleep as well.

Wally, well drunk, decides to go home but staggers into the hothouse and collapses on the same spot where he buried Frank!   Well, I can see if he was drunk...but wouldn't it be icky to fall down on the exact same spot where you put a person to his final rest?  Anyway, due to some impressive time-lapse photography the death vine sprouts from the ground and strangles Frank while he sputters in and out of consciousness until he finally dies.   Terry wakes up after a while and discovers his body with a scream.

The detective starts grilling Terry and finally pulls the story out of her as he threatens to pull out the Mirada plant that Wally died on and see what is beneath it.  Terry shrieks and runs to the hothouse and starts pulling on it herself.  The detective finally restrains her and digs to the roots...which happen to be coming from the pod in Frank's dead hand.   You know, because it's a story of vengeance and everything.

Sadly, the story fails because it doesn't create a believable scenario for all of this.   Why must Wally be the halfassed mastermind behind this?   Why does Terry even let herself be used like this?   In fact, why isn't Terry the one blackmailing her tormentor?  Now that would have been interesting....he was the one who buried the body, so she would be the one with actual blackmail material.     Plus it suffers from an overabundance of music designed to create emotion instead of letting the story do it.   It does this much like a Spielburg film does:  when an 'important' scene occurs, the music booms so loud you either hear your skull rattle or the outer case of your television vibrate.   While this works to enhance a scene, it cheapens a movie when it occurs during every plot point.  A story should make these points important by itself and when it does, the music proves a very funny and MSTable attempt at self-mockery.

Finally, we have a very interesting outro by Lon Chaney, Jr:  nothing at all.  He doesn't appear at all.  The camera turns from the room to a clock with no hands  (because it's a prison, see?)  and goes straight to the closing titles.    Was this the story that was more horrible than Lon's?   Or did he pass out before they started rolling the camera?  Either way, it provides an ending to the three currently available episodes of 13 Demon Street.

BOTTOM LINE:  Fairly good effects, a script that nearly makes it, but flawed in some ways.   Half a star for merely having the ability to use music in a faux-shock kind of way.