The Twilight Zone - The Complete Episode Guide

The Twilight Zone - The Complete Episode Guide

Nick Naughton

© Copyright 2021 Nick Naughton.

All Rights Reserved

CONTENTS

Preface The Time Element Season One Season Two Season Three Season Four Season Five Final Lists References PREFACE The Twilight Zone was created by the great Rod Serling and ran from 1959 for 156 episodes. At its very best it was the gold standard by which other fantasy anthology shows are still judged. The following book offers a guide to every episode of The Twilight Zone - including a synopsis, trivia, and an evaluation and ranking. Hopefully this book will provide a valuable reference guide to all the episodes for anyone interested in this wonderful show. At the conclusion of this book I will offer a few lists of the best and the worst of the episodes. My rankings and opinions are of course subjective. You may enjoy some of these episodes more (or indeed less!) than I did but the book that follows will hopefully help to separate the wheat from the chaff and give you an indication which stories should be at the top (and bottom) of the pile for any prospective Twilight Zone marathon. So, without further delay, let's take a deep dive into the mysterious, spine-tingling, fantastical, occasionally whimsical, and wonderful world of The Twilight Zone... THE TIME ELEMENT (Director: Allen Reisner, Writer: Rod Serling) 1958 "Once upon a time there was a psychiatrist named Arnold Gillespie and a patient whose name was Peter Jenson. Mr. Jenson walked into the office nine minutes ago. It is eleven o'clock, Saturday morning, October 4th, 1958. It is perhaps chronologically trite to be so specific about an hour and a date but involved in this story is a time element." The Time Element is what you might describe as the unofficial Twilight Zone pilot. This story was sold to CBS by Rod Serling and adapted for television as part of the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse. CBS were initially said to be rather unenthusiastic about the script (it could be that the story revolving around Pearl Harbour, which was still fairly recent history at the time, might explain some of their wariness) and didn't exactly trip over themselves to adapt it but this changed when Bert Granet became a producer at CBS and desired an original Rod Serling script to adapt for television. The Time Element, despite the apparent misgivings of CBS, happily generated a positive reception from viewers and led directly to The Twilight Zone. This is very much a blueprint for The Twilight Zone in that it has an outlandish premise and a haunting and memorable twist ending. The Time Element was broadcast on November 24, 1958, and was hosted and introduced by Desi Arnaz (who unnecessarily suggests a theory for the twist at the conclusion of the story). There are no opening and closing monologues by Rod Serling in The Time Element. The enjoyable tradition of the Serling monologues to frame the episodes would become a fundamental part of The Twilight Zone though. Despite feeling rather forgotten today, the Time Element is essentially like a bonus episode of The Twilight Zone for fans and very much a blood relative to the show that followed. The premise of The Time Element concerns a man named Peter Jenson (William Bendix). Jenson, who seems exceptionally frazzled and agitated, visits psychoanalyst Dr Gillespie (Martin Balsam) to seek guidance on how to cope with the vivid and discombobulating dreams he has to endure night after night. More than anything Jenson simply wants to know if Dr Gillespie can provide any explanation for what is happening to him. In his dreams, Jenson find himself transported from the present day New York of 1958 to Honolulu in 1941. The specific date in 1941 is December the 6th - one day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. Jenson tries to warn the people he meets in 1941 - most saliently a young newly married naval ensign named Janoski (Darryl Hickman) - that an attack is imminent but naturally no one believes him. Jenson's claim that he is from 1958 predictably make people think he is completely crazy. Jenson tells a dubious Dr Gillespie that these are not mere dreams. He is convinced that when he sleeps he REALLY is transported back to 1941... The Time Element is a fairly absorbing fantastical drama that always manages to hold one's attention with its time travel premise. The Twilight Zone would return to the theme of time travel more than once (with mixed results) but The Time Element is a solid enough first riff on this well worn fantasy story device. The twist at the end of The Time Element is terrific and brings the story to a satisfying and hauntingly atmospheric conclusion. The Time Element is not perfect though. The most obvious problem is that it is an hour long - as opposed to the classic half-hour format (the fourth season aside) of The Twilight Zone. One can't help feeling that The Time Element would have worked even better if edited down slightly. Though the scenes of Jenson and Dr Gillespie together are enjoyable it feels like there are a few too many of them. One might argue there are also a few too many scenes of a drunken Jenson becoming belligerent in the Honolulu bar he frequents. There is a very affecting scene though where Jenson - now desperate and at the end of his rope - breaks down in the bar and begins singing World War 2 songs that he assures the bewildered patrons they'll soon be all too familiar with. William Bendix is a trifle overwrought at times as Jenson and the actors playing the young naval couple are not the most natural in the world but Martin Balsam (who would of course appear in The Twilight Zone more than once) is very good and the other supporting parts are generally well cast. The Time Element's direction is a little on the flat side. The Twilight Zone itself was more stylish and inventive than The Time Element in terms of its production. These quibbles aside though, The Time Element is very compelling at its best and definitely worth watching. As far as time travel stories go, The Time Element is not bad at all and the twist alone makes this worthy of your time. You can't help thinking that a half-hour version of The Time Element with Jack Klugman as Jenson might well have been a classic Twilight Zone episode. B Season One 1959/1960 WHERE IS EVERYBODY? (Director: Robert Stevens, Writer: Rod Serling) "The place is here, the time is now, and the journey into the shadows that we're about to watch could be our journey." An amnesia stricken and confused man named Mike Ferris (Earl Holliman) wanders through a lonely, deserted landscape and seemingly abandoned town in an Air Force uniform with no memory of what may or may not have happened to present this mysterious state of affairs. As Mike becomes more and more spooked by his lonely and puzzling situation he begins to feel like someone is secretly watching him... Rod Serling got the idea for Where Is Everybody? after wandering through an empty studio lot and finding it rather creepy. All the evidence of a community but no people anywhere - just a sense of desolation and loneliness. It struck him how unsettling and nightmarish it would be to suddenly find yourself alone in a city with no people whatsoever. It's very apparent that much care and effort has gone into this pilot. It cost $75,000 (a lot of money for a 30 minute television pilot in 1959) and was shot at Universal Studios over nine days. When the pilot was first screened to the network and sponsors it was deemed so strong that a deal was cut within six hours for The Twilight Zone to become a series. Where Is Everybody? is a strong and intriguing start for what would soon become an iconic and justifiably famous series. The mystery device is perhaps not the most original but the premise works well and develops a surreal and strange atmosphere - especially in the scene where Ferris encounters an empty diner with recent evidence of activity and people having been there. Holliman's performance is effective enough to convince us of his desperate plight and this Twilight Zone's opener is well produced and committed to the premise it presents the viewer. This is a successful and interesting beginning for The Twilight Zone. Where Is Everybody? is certainly worthy of your time. You may well guess the twist before it arrives but it still serves as a fairly effective way to wrap up the story. One notable thing about Where Is Everybody? is that the (soon to be familiar) opening narration was originally by Westbrook Van Voorhis rather than Rod Serling. They decided on reflection that Van Voorhis sounded rather too one note and pompous and approached Orson Welles to replace him. After Welles asked for a preposterous amount of money for his famous vocal services a very reluctant Rod Serling decided to do The Twilight Zone narrations himself. A happy accident. He was perfect and his voice became an integral and iconic part of the series. B+ ONE FOR THE ANGELS (Director: Robert Parrish, Writer: Rod Serling) "Street scene: summer. The present. Man on a sidewalk named Lew Bookman, age sixtyish. Occupation: pitchman. Lew Bookman, a fixture of the summer, a rather minor component to a hot July, a nondescript, commonplace little man whose life is a treadmill built out of sidewalks. In just a moment, Lew Bookman will have to concern himself with survival, because as of three o'clock this hot July afternoon he'll be stalked by Mr Death." Amiable low-rent salesman Lew Bookman (Ed Wynn) is visited by Death (Murray Hamilton) and told that his time is up. Lew (with slight shades of Bergman's then recent The Seventh Seal) manages to delay the inevitable by proposing that first he must first make his final masterpiece pitch as a salesman. The "one for the angels". When Lew fails to complete the pitch (for rather obvious reasons), Death reveals that he will take a young girl named Maggie (Dana Dillway) in his place. Lew must use all of his street smarts and cunning to outhink Death and save Maggie... This was based on a teleplay Rod Serling wrote out of college about a sidewalk salesman who must save his brother from being whacked by some hoods by delivering such a brilliant series of sales pitches that he and his brother are always surrounded by crowds and so therefore safe. He juggled the plot details around, gave it an injection of fantasy and fashioned it as a Twilight Zone story and vehicle for the comedian Ed Wynn. Wynn is far too deliberate and laid back to ever be terribly convincing as a salesman with fast persuasive patter but he delivers a likeable and sweet performance at the heart of the story. Wynn's warm hearted performance manages to wring a lot of charm from what is a relatively straight forward screenplay. What Serling does most successfully is make a grand noble hero out of what appears on the surface to be a most ordinary figure though - of course - Lew is no ordinary man. Children love Lew and in Serling's eyes this makes him a "very important" man. One For the Angels is not the most memorable Twilight Zone of this or any other era and fades in the memory fairly soon compared to the classic episodes but it's watchable enough with Wynn's loveable character negating the slightly over familiar premise. Far from a classic but a likeable little episode. B- MR DENTON ON DOOMSDAY (Director: Allen Reisner, Writer: Rod Serling) "Portrait of a town drunk named Al Denton. This is a man who's begun his dying early - a long, agonizing route through a maze of bottles. Al Denton, who would probably give an arm or a leg or a part of his soul to have another chance, to be able to rise up and shake the dirt from his body and the bad dreams that infest his consciousness. In the parlance of the times, this is a peddler, a rather fanciful-looking little man in a black frock coat. And this is the third principal character of our story. Its function: perhaps to give Mr Al Denton his second chance." Al Denton (Dan Duryea) is a drunken cowboy in the Old West who was once famed for his sharpshooting and reflexes. His insatiable desire for alcohol has now made him a humiliated, mocked and broken man. An enigmatic stranger by the name of Henry J Fate (Malcolm Atterbury) restores Al's dignity through supernatural sleight of hand but our troubled hero faces a severe test of nerve and confidence when an up and coming gunslinger called Grant (Doug McClure) arrives for a duel... The first of Twilight Zone's western stories, Mr Denton on Doomsday is an above average drama boosted by the sympathetic performance of Dan Duryea as Denton. Duryea (who was apparently usually cast as villains) is especially strong in the scenes where he confesses that being the fastest draw in town - and so inevitably attracting constant challenges from the new kid on the block - is what drove him to drink in the first place. This life of violence and death has taken a heavy toll. Look out for a wonderfully slimy turn by a young Martin Landau as a bully who delights in humiliating Al at the start of the story and also a baby faced Doug McClure in an early role as the sharpshooter intent on knocking Al off of his perch. While Mr Denton on Doomsday is not quite gold standard Twilight Zone the strong dialogue by Serling and sincere performances make it very worthwhile. Mr Denton on Doomsday is a successful first foray into the western genre for The Twilight Zone. You may guess the ending before we get there but this is a poignant tale with a good atmosphere and given a big boost by the cast. B THE SIXTEEN-MILLIMETER SHRINE (Director: Mitchell Leisen, Writer: Rod Serling) "Picture of a woman looking at a picture. Movie great of another time, once-brilliant star in a firmament no longer a part of the sky, eclipsed by the movement of earth and time. Barbara Jean Trenton, whose world is a projection room, whose dreams are made out of celluloid. Barbara Jean Trenton, struck down by hit-and-run years and lying on the unhappy pavement, trying desperately to get the license number of fleeting fame." Barbara Jean Trenton (Ida Lupino) is an old movie star from the 1930s who now lives as a recluse in her mansion, idling her days away watching her old films with nostalgic bittersweet enchantment. Her agent Danny (Martin Balsam) must somehow get her to face up to reality and live for today - not yearn hopelessly for yesterday... The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine is a poignant episode about the passing of time and how this unavoidable part of human existence is harder for some than others. Barbara Jean was the talk of the town twenty-five years ago but growing older and seeing her star and beauty wane has not been easy. The fantastical ending doesn't make any sense but works in no small part thanks to the haunting music by Frank Waxman - which gives The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine a dreamy atmosphere. What lifts the story are the rich performances from Lupino and Martin Balsam, the pair given some good dialogue by Serling. Jerome Cowan of The Maltese Falcon makes a cameo as a former leading man of Barbara - the scene conveying everything about Barbara's character. She can barely face being in the same room with him because he simply reminds her that they are all older now. Not a great episode but the score and the performances are superb. This is sort of Sunset Boulevard meets The Purple Rose of Cairo and a very dreamlike half hour of television. B- WALKING DISTANCE (Director: Robert Stevens, Writer: Rod Serling) "Martin Sloan, age thirty-six. Occupation: vice-president, ad agency, in charge of media. This is not just a Sunday drive for Martin Sloan. He perhaps doesn't know it at the time, but it's an exodus. Somewhere up the road he's looking for sanity. And somewhere up the road, he'll find something else." Martin Sloan (Gig Young) is an unhappy executive suffering from a life crisis and dreaming of the innocent, carefree days of his childhood. One day, he leaves his car and decides to walk to the small town where he spent his youth. When he arrives Martin is shocked to discover that nothing seems to have changed at all... Walking Distance is the first truly great Twilight Zone episode and one of the most affecting in the long history of the series. Serling taps into his own life, the stresses and strains of his workload and desire to return to a simpler way of life and the romanticised memories of childhood and youth. This is a wistful, nostalgic fantasy rather than overt science fiction, a touching story about the burdens of adulthood and altogether one of the most poignant ever written for the Twilight Zone. Walking Distance was inspired by Rod Serling walking through the MGM set in the 1950s and being struck by how much it reminded him of the town he grew up in. It occurred to him how people have a longing to go home - but to the misty, romantic notion of home they remember from their childhood. A place you can never actually go back to (except of course in the Twilight Zone). It was a familiar Serling theme, a man having a personal crisis and yearning to escape from the dog eat dog modern world with all of its stresses and strains. Serling's incredible workload often left him shattered and on the verge of a nervous breakdown himself and he incorporated this into several moving stories. The central character here, Martin Sloan is overworked, stressed out and at the end of his tether. In an allusion to Alice in Wonderland (and maybe The Wizard of Oz too presumably) he abandons his car and heads down a quiet road on foot towards the small town he grew up in. Bernard Herrmann's beautiful score is a perfect backdrop for the moving scenes of Martin reconnecting with a world he thought was gone forever. The simple act of buying an ice cream in his old home town is wonderfully played. There is of course a bittersweet edge to the fantasy with Martin realising - as everyone must - that you can't go home again but Serling's meditation on this theme is consistently interesting and poignant. His closing narration is one of his most memorable. A classic Twilight Zone episode. A ESCAPE CLAUSE (Director: Mitchell Leisen, Writer: Rod Serling) "You’re about to meet a hypochondriac. Witness Mr Walter Bedeker age forty-four. Afraid of the following: death, disease, other people, germs, draft, and everything else. He has one interest in life and that’s Walter Bedeker. One preoccupation, the life and well-being of Walter Bedeker. One abiding concern about society, that if Walter Bedeker should die how will it survive without him?" A hypochondriac named Walter Bedeker (David Wayne) makes a deal with the Devilish Mr Cadwallader (Thomas Gomez) for immortality in exchange for his soul. The escape clause? If Walter ever becomes weary of immortality a peaceful death will be his for the asking... Escape Clause makes for a decent black comedy with David Wayne enjoying himself as the misanthropic Walter - our anti-hero prone to increasingly self destructive behaviour as the burdens of immortality begin to hit home. The moral of the story is relatively simple - how can you truly appreciate life as a precious thing if nothing can harm you and you know it will last forever? - and while Escape Clause is Rod Serling coasting to an extent he wrings enough laughs and food for thought to make this one breeze past in likeable enough fashion. This is a fairly entertaining little episode with lashings of black humour and a wonderful performance by David Wayne as the cantankerous Bedeker. His increasing boredom with immortality is fun as he becomes increasingly immoral and prone to doing things like throwing himself in front of a train! This an effective sequence with copious use of dry ice. While the budget for these shows is clearly not astronomical they are inventive in terms of their production. There's a nice twist in the tale here too. Escape Clause is decent fun on the whole but not one of the very best or most ambitious episodes in season one. B- THE LONELY (Director: Jack Smight, Writer: Rod Serling) "Witness if you will a dungeon, made out of mountains, salt flats and sand that stretch to infinity. The dungeon has an inmate: James A Corry. And this is his residence: a metal shack. An old touring car that squats in the sun and goes nowhere - for there is nowhere to go. For the record let it be known that James A Corry is a convicted criminal placed in solitary confinement. Confinement in this case stretches as far as the eye can see, because this particular dungeon is on an asteroid nine million miles from the Earth. Now witness if you will a man's mind and body shrivelling in the sun, a man dying of loneliness." In the year 2046, a convicted murderer named Corry (Jack Warden) is banished to live alone on a desert like asteroid for fifty years - though he seems a gentle soul and maintains that it was an act of self defence. When the supply ship from Earth arrives for a brief stop, the Captain ((John Dehner) has sympathy for the lonely plight of Corry and leaves him a lifelike female robot for company... A classic episode, The Lonely is a haunting meditation on the effect isolation and alienation can have on the human spirit. Serling's thoughtful screenplay is done full justice by the inspired casting of Jack Warden as Corry and authentic location work that conveys the desperate circumstances of his punishment, sent to live on a world where he is the only inhabitant. Warden convincingly conveys the arc of Corry, appalled by the synthetic companion at first but then falling in love with "Alicia" because he has no one else to turn to. Jean Marsh gives a strong performance as Alicia and makes the ending all the more poignant. The sun baked kooky Death Valley location really does give one the impression of a far distant world. Cory's isolation is starkly conveyed by his metal shack home - the only blip on a vast barren landscape. This is another rumination by Serling on the need for human contact and one of his best on this theme. "Every morning when I get up I tell myself this is my last day of sanity. I can't stand this loneliness one more day, not one more day! I know when I can't keep my fingers still and the inside of my mouth feels like gunpowder and burnt copper. Down deep inside my gut I get an ache that's just pulling everything out. Then I force myself to hold on for one more day, just one more day. But I can't do that for another 46 years, Allenby. I'll go right out of my mind." The Lonely is classic Twilight Zone. A- TIME ENOUGH AT LAST (Director: John Brahm, Writer: Rod Serling) "Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers. A bookish little man whose passion is the printed page but who is conspired against by a bank president and a wife and a world full of tongue-cluckers and the unrelenting hands of a clock. But in just a moment Mr. Bemis will enter a world without bank presidents or wives or clocks or anything else. He'll have a world all to himself without anyone." Henry Bemis (Burgess Meredith) is a short-sighted bank clerk and compulsive book worm. Henry is constantly frustrated by his lack of quality reading time but soon he might have all the time in the world... This was based on a short story by Lynn Venable and expanded by Serling (while retaining the rather heartbreaking but delicious twist at the end). Burgess Meredith would star in four Twilight Zone episodes but this was by far the most famous and memorable. He makes Bemis a loveable misfit and an amusing and introspective man that we always feel sympathy for. One of the most fondly remembered stories in the history of the show, Time Enough at Last has one of the most famous (and heartbreaking) twist endings and a charming central performance by Twilight Zone regular Burgess Meredith as the weedy put upon Bemis. The story switches from a domestic comic tale of a man who just can't stand up for himself to an apocalyptic last act and the set designs (on what was a limited budget) are nicely inventive. Memorable images include Bemis bouncing around in the bank vault he sneaks in to read in peace and the library steps that still somehow stand despite the destruction all around them. The actual steps used in the production were still standing from a set on the MGM backlot and wonderfully atmospheric. Jacqueline deWitt and Vaughn Taylor lend solid support as Henry's disapproving wife and Scrooge like boss respectively. Time Enough at Last is a justifiably famous episode. A- PERCHANCE TO DREAM (Director: Robert Florey, Writer: Charles Beaumont) "Twelve o'clock noon. An ordinary scene, an ordinary city. Lunchtime for thousands of ordinary people. To most of them, this hour will be a rest, a pleasant break in the day's routine. To most, but not all. To Edward Hall, time is an enemy, and the hour to come is a matter of life and death." Edward Hall (Richard Conte) is a man with a cardiac condition who tells his psychiatrist Dr Rathmann (John Larch) that if he falls asleep he thinks he will die. The reason? He has been trapped in a recurring dream that always features a sultry carnival dancer named Maya (Suzanne Lloyd) trying to entice him into a funfair and onto a roller coaster with the intention of frightening him to death. If he goes asleep and returns to the dream he believes he will have a heart attack in his sleep. But staying awake forever will be an impossible strain on his heart too. What can he do? Charles Beaumont's first Twilight Zone story is an engagingly strange fable with a neat premise (Edward must stay awake all the time or risk heart failure!) and makes the most of the recurring carnival nightmare with exotic dancer Maya (Suzanne Lloyd) forever trying to lure him into a funfair where the rides will surely be too much for his fragile heart. This is a highly inventive and energetic episode with a freaky creepy funfair carnival atmosphere and a breathless and perfect performance by Richard Conte as Hall. Conte was actually in The Godfather many years later. Beaumont's script is tightly conceived and presents the amusement park as a nightmare. He obviously had big issues with funfairs and dreams! It's the surreal dreamlike atmosphere which sustains this episode and holds your attention. As ever with The Twilight Zone the black and white photography enjoyably adds to the strange ambiance. You would not call Perchance To Dream a classic Twilight Zone episode but it is a unique and engagingly bonkers experience and certainly worthy of your time. This is a fun entry into the Twilght Zone for Charles Beaumont. B JUDGMENT NIGHT (Director: John Brahm, Writer: Rod Serling) "Her name is the S.S. Queen of Glasgow. Her registry: British. Gross tonnage: five thousand. Age: indeterminate. At this moment she's one day out of Liverpool, her destination New York. Duly recorded on this ship's log is the sailing time, course to destination, weather conditions, temperature, longitude and latitude. But what is never recorded in a log is the fear that washes over a deck like fog and ocean spray. Fear like the throbbing strokes of engine pistons, each like a heartbeat, parceling out every hour into breathless minutes of watching, waiting and dreading. For the year is 1942, and this particular ship has lost its convoy. It travels alone like an aged blind thing groping through the unfriendly dark, stalked by unseen periscopes of steel killers. Yes, the Queen of Glasgow is a frightened ship, and she carries with her a premonition of death." The Queen of Glasgow is sailing from Liverpool to New York in 1942 and onboard is a German man named Carl Lanser (Nehemiah Persoff) who has absolutely no idea how he got on a British ship. But Lanser has a strange feeling that he knows the passengers and crew and has seen them before. He also has an overwhelming premonition that the ship is doomed and that something terrible will happen at exactly 1.15 am... A recurring nightmare ghost story with a strong sense of atmosphere and some impressive sets (recycled from The Wreck of the Mary Deare), Judgment Night is a satisfying chiller with an appropriately frazzled performance by Nehemiah Persoff. Serling's clever script makes this a story that one can return to even with knowledge of the twist at the end and still find interesting - especially as we then piece the clues together. The crew of the ship soon begin to become suspicious of Lanser. Viewers of this episode will note an early role for Avengers star Patrick Macnee as the captain of the ship. Judgment Night is an enjoyable and compelling episode and another strong story for series one. The deja vu aspect to the story is something that has been done to death by now in fantasy and science fiction but it never feels too alarmingly rote or derivative here and the episode has a nice sense of atmosphere. Look out for the way some real U-boat footage is enjoyably incorporated into this episode. B AND WHEN THE SKY WAS OPENED (Director: Douglas Heyes, Writer: Richard Matheson) "Her name: X-20. Her type: an experimental interceptor. Recent history: a crash landing in the Mojave Desert after a thirty-one hour flight nine hundred miles into space. Incidental data: the ship, with the men who flew her, disappeared from the radar screen for twenty-four hours. But the shrouds that cover mysteries are not always made out of a tarpaulin, as this man will soon find out on the other side of a hospital door." Three astronauts - Gart (Jim Hutton), Forbes (Rod Taylor) and Harrington (Charles Aidmen) - return as heroes after the first space expedition but back on Earth they begin to have an overwhelming and unsettling feeling that they don't belong there anymore. Very soon their existence begins to come under threat... Richard Matheson's first Twilight Zone screenplay (based on his short story Disappearing Act) makes for a superior episode with strong direction by Douglas Heyes. Heyes would return for further classic episodes (The After Hours, Eye of the Beholder and The Howling Man) and he builds a great deal of suspense and fear as the astronauts begin to be erased from history one by one. Loss of identity and memory is a theme the series would examine in later stories but And When the Sky Was Opened rates as highly as most of them. Jim Hutton is sympathetic as the young central astronaut and Rod Taylor (of The Time Machine fame) and Charles Aidmen are believable as his colleagues. A memorable episode made all the more compelling by the uneasy sense of the inevitable that pervades the story. These men can't seem to escape from their mysterious fate and that is terrifying because the fate in question is essentially wiping them from existence! One might propose that a subtext of the story here is death - a fate that also erases all that one was. The fate of these astronauts is even worse than death though because because no one will remember they even existed in the first place. B+ WHAT YOU NEED (Director: Alvin Ganzer, Writer: Rod Serling) "You're looking at Mr. Fred Renard, who carries on his shoulder a chip the size of the national debt. This is a sour man, a friendless man, a lonely man, a grasping, compulsive, nervous man. This is a man who has lived thirty-six undistinguished, meaningless, pointless, failure-laden years and who at this moment looks for an escape - any escape, any way, anything, anybody - to get out of the rut. And this little old man is just what Mr. Renard is waiting for." Pedott (Ernest Truex) is a mysterious but kind hearted salesman who seems to know exactly what people will need in the future. However, an intimidating crook named Renard (Steve Cochran) tries to exploit his ability... What You Need is lighter episode that doesn't bear too much close inspection but the uncanny gifts of the salesman are used to nice effect by Serling's script and Ernest Truex gives a likeable performance as the wise old hustler. He's matched by Steve Cochran as the obnoxious and frightening Renard and the battle of wills between the two very different men moves the story along in generally agreeable fashion. When the sour bully Renard notices the abilities of Pedott, he demands that he be given something that will help him too as he is something of a bitter loser in life. Pedott gives him a pair of scissors and Renard isn't too impressed. However, when he gets his tie caught in a lift the scissors save his life and he realises that Pedott has a truly remarkable ability. He goes back to the old man and keeps demanding more and more things. Pedott soon realises that he is going to have to come up with a plan to get this dangerous and immoral bully off his back and out of his life. This is the sort of story that would outstay its welcome in a longer format but the brief running time of Twilight Zone (save for one later season as we shall see later) means that it never threatens your patience. The fantastical concept of the story has some nice little pay-offs and this is all agreeable enough. It probably won't lodge in the memory as one of the most memorable Twilight Zone episodes but you should have a decent enough time while you are watching. Far from a classic but a likeable enough episode. B- THE FOUR OF US ARE DYING (Director: John Brahm, Writer: Rod Serling) "His name is Arch Hammer. He's thirty-six years old. He's been a salesman, a dispatcher, a truck driver, a con man, a bookie, and a part-time bartender. This is a cheap man, a nickel and dime man, with a cheapness that goes past the suit and the shirt; a cheapness of mind, a cheapness of taste, a tawdry little shine on the seat of his conscience, and a dark-room squint at a world whose sunlight has never gotten through to him..." A shady man named Arch Hammer (Robert Townes) can alter his appearance to mimic other people. As you might imagine this leads to all manner of complicated - and also dangerous - shenanigans. He checks into a motel and impersonates a trumpet player named Johnny (Ross Martin) to get Johnny's girlfriend Maggie (Beverly Garland) and then later a murdered gangster named Strerig (Phillip Pine) to exhort some money from the hood who thought he had killed Strerig. This is only the start of his face changing capers though and as this is the Twilight Zone Hammer is probably going to get more than he bargained for... An interesting episode (taken from an unpublished story by George Clayton Johnson), The Four of Us Are Dying doesn't threaten the Twilight Zone top table but still has much going for it. Hammer's ability is conveyed with some clever optical effects and directorial sleight of hand and the smoke hazed jazz world of gangsters and night strobed alleyways gives The Four of Us Are Dying a strong sense of atmosphere. Townes is an interesting presence as Hammer and Jerry Goldsmith's score makes a fine backdrop to the action. You might describe this as an inventive second tier Twilight Zone entry. There's a risk here that the concept is more interesting than the story (and so doesn't do the concept full justice) but this is a fairly compelling experience once the plot gets going and it's all engaging enough. Despite the absurd premise, this is played straight and beautifully directed with some excellent performances. Love the shot of Hammer shaving early on where his face changes twice in the mirror. The Four of Us Are Dying is no classic but it is clever and competent. B- THIRD FROM THE SUN (Director: Richard L Bare, Writer: Rod Serling) "Quitting time at the plant. Time for supper now. Time for families. Time for a cool drink on a porch. Time for the quiet rustle of leaf-laden trees that screen out the moon. And underneath it all, behind the eyes of the men, hanging invisible over the summer night, is a horror without words. For this is the stillness before storm. This is the eve of the end." Fearful of an impending nuclear war, scientist William Sturka (Fritz Weaver) plans to steal a secret government flying saucer so his family can escape into space. The only problem is the obstinately suspicious government agent named Carling (Harry Andrews)... A great episode, Third from the Sun has a memorable twist at the end but is most successful in building suspense as Sturka's painstaking plans to steal the saucer craft are threatened by the sweaty and forever prying attentions of Carling. Andrews and Weaver are both superb in their roles with good support by Joe Maross as Sturka's co-conspirator Jerry. The extended card game sequence where Andrews arrives at the house is wonderfully tense. The flying saucer is fun in this story too and was used in Forbidden Planet. Third from the Sun works really well because of the tension and paranoia it laces into the story and it helps of course that this is all played by a terrific cast. This is a really good episode and the sort of thing that Serling and The Twilight Zone always did so well. One thing that really helps this episode is that we are rooting for the central characters to escape because we know they've spent months planning their mission. Because we are invested in the plight of these characters this means Carling works even better as a villain. A- I SHOT AN ARROW INTO THE AIR (Director: Stuart Rosenberg, Writer: Rod Serling) "Her name is the Arrow One. She represents four and a half years of planning, preparation and training, and a thousand years of science and mathematics and the projected dreams and hopes of not only a nation but a world. She is the first manned aircraft into space. And this is the countdown, the last five seconds before man shot an arrow into the air." Three astronauts are stranded on rocky asteroid with a limited supply of water. Colonel Donlin (Edward Binns) soon has his hands full though with the scheming and potentially mutinous Corey (Dewey Martin)... I Shot an Arrow into the Air was written by Rod Serling from an idea by Madelon Champion. Champion suggested the idea for the story to Serling during a conversation and was paid $500 for it. Although Serling always encouraged ideas and screenplays from "outsiders" this was the only time he ever deemed one of them interesting enough to use. I Shot an Arrow into the Air is best remembered for the twist ending (which you may well see coming anyway - thus potentially negating its impact) and probably deserves a slightly better reputation than it has in the Twilight Zone pantheon. Serling's extra narration over the third act seems somewhat gratuitous (Serling does some narration during the episode over rocky desert vistas in addition to his usual vocal duties at the beginning and end) and the twist unavoidably makes the characters look rather stupid in retrospect but the story is always sufficiently gripping and Dewey Martin makes a good stock Twilight Zone villain as the increasingly unhinged Corey. I'm always a sucker for these types of stories where they have astronauts trapped somewhere strange and getting on each other's nerves. The use of Death Valley for the location gives this an authentically weird and desolate atmosphere and all in all it's a solid enough Twilight Zone. You might even say that this is an underrated Twilight Zone episode. It isn't perfect by any means but it is competent and engaging enough for what it is. This episode - on a science level - doesn't make much sense when you think about it afterwards but it is absorbing. B THE HITCH-HIKER (Director: Alvin Ganzer, Writer: Rod Serling) "Her name is Nan Adams. She's twenty-seven years old. Her occupation: buyer at a New York department store, at present on vacation, driving cross-country to Los Angeles, California, from Manhattan. Minor incident on Highway 11 in Pennsylvania, perhaps to be filed away under accidents you walk away from. But from this moment on, Nan Adams's companion on a trip to California will be terror; her route - fear; her destination - quite unknown." Nan Adams (Inga Stevens) is a young woman on a long car journey. After a tyre blows out, she keeps on seeing a strange hitch-hiker (Leonard Strong) by the road who seems to be beckoning her to follow him. No matter how far she drives he keeps appearing again. Who is he and what does he want? This is another memorable episode in the mostly classic first season of The Twilight Zone. A haunting atmosphere is superbly maintained throughout and takes us to a touching climax. While the premise might feel familiar to modern viewers this is a classic rendering of an oft riffed fantasy staple. Inga Stevens makes a fine confused heroine and Leonard Strong is well cast as the shabby and increasingly ominous hitch-hiker. At its best this episode has some of the ambience of weird vintage 60s horror movies like Carnival of Souls. The narration by the heroine is a trifle purple but enjoyable enough and the strange baffling aura of mystery which pervades the story is strong and vivid. I think The Hitch-Hiker is possibly a trifle overrated in Twilight Zone retrospectives but I certainly wouldn't dispute that it is a very interesting and effective episode. The road movie quality (a spooky road movie at that!) to this story is certainly enjoyable too. Look out for the great tense sequence where Nan's car stalls on some railway tracks. B+ THE FEVER (Director: Robert Florey, Writer: Rod Serling) "Mr and Mrs Franklin Gibbs, three days and two nights, all expenses paid, at a Las Vegas hotel, won by virtue of Mrs Gibbs's knack with a phrase. But unbeknownst to either Mr. or Mrs Gibbs is the fact that there's a prize in their package neither expected nor bargained for. In just a moment one of them will succumb to an illness worse than any virus can produce, a most inoperative, deadly, life-shattering affliction known as the fever." The tight fisted Scrooge like Franklin Gibbs (Everett Sloane) is not terribly thrilled when his wife Flora (Viva Janis) wins a holiday in Las Vegas. He hates gambling - although Flora is rather excited by the holiday. Anyway, when a drunk thrusts a silver dollar in his hand and makes him activate a one-armed bandit slot machine, Gibbs has a big win. He then keeps hearing the slot machine call out his name and is irresistibly drawn to the one-armed bandit. His rationale is that the winnings are tainted money so he may as well get rid of it by putting it back in the machine. Gibbs is soon hopelessly addicted to the slot machine and spends all hours of the day there losing all of their money in a frantic obsessed sweaty haze. Why does it have such power over him? A lighter episode and a middle-ranking one by the high standards of season one but The Fever is watchable enough thanks mainly to Everett Sloane's frazzled performance as Franklin - a man who begins the story prim and proper and then gradually loses his mind as his gambling obsession consumes him. The casino scenes are a lot of fun here and Serling seems to be enjoying himself, especially in the scenes he includes where the slot machine takes on a life of its own and seems to call out to Franklin. The Fever is a fun little episode but not one of the best in season one. This episode was apparently inspired by Rod Serling visiting Las Vegas with his wife. Maybe he got hooked on a slot machine himself and decided to write a story about it? The Fever is fairly forgettable in the long run and doesn't hold a candle to the best Twilight Zone episodes but it's engaging and amusing enough for what it is. This is definitely though one of those Twilight Zones that would have got tiresome in an hour long format. The concept is pretty slight but thankfully doesn't outstay its welcome in the shorter format. B- THE LAST FLIGHT (Director: William Claxton, Writer: Richard Matheson) "Witness Flight Lieutenant William Terrance Decker, Royal Flying Corps, returning from a patrol somewhere over France. The year is 1917. The problem is that the Lieutenant is hopelessly lost. Lieutenant Decker will soon discover that a man can be lost not only in terms of maps and miles, but also in time, and time in this case can be measured in eternities." A British World War I pilot named Lt William Terrence Decker (Kenneth Haigh) lands on an air base in France and is astonished when the American commanders there tell him the year is 1959. It appears Decker has jumped into the future... This is a good time travel episode with a layered and intelligent script and good location work at a real air base (not to mention use of an authentic 1918 Nieport biplane). Kenneth Haigh gives a credible performance as the British pilot who has somehow escaped from his own time and the story arc of Decker having the chance to rewrite history gives the story both impetus and a satisfying last act. The supporting cast are believable and Serling wrings full value out of the outlandish premise. The characters are pretty good in The Last Flight and behave in a realistic way despite the fantastical premise. Note how Decker is somewhat suspicious of the Americans at first and bemused at how advanced they are. He comes from a time when America was largely isolationist in nature and didn't play a major role in world affairs. One wouldn't call The Last Flight one of the very best Twilight Zone episodes but it's strong and well made all the same and manages to pack a lot of story into its thirty minutes without the plot ever feeling clunky or overstuffed. This was the first completely non-Rod Serling script to go into production and it's a very strong one. It's very talky at times but the actors handle this well. B+ THE PURPLE TESTAMENT (Director: Richard L Bare, Writer: Rod Serling) "Infantry platoon, U.S. Army, Phillipine Islands, 1945. These are the faces of the young men who fight. As if some omniscient painter had mixed a tube of oils that were at one time earth brown, dust gray, blood red, beard black, and fear - yellow white, and these men were the models. For this is the province of combat and these are the faces of war." In the war torn Far East of World War 2, Lt Fitzgerald (William Reynolds) always notices a strange eerie glow in the face of the soldier in his platoon who is destined to die next... Serling taps into his own World War 2 experiences for this poignant story. The limited budget places some unavoidable constraints on the production with a stagebound hokey jungle atmosphere but the acting is solid and the premise is haunting - especially the spooky light on the faces of the doomed men. Soldiers in World War 2 really did look into the faces of friends knowing that it might be the last time they ever saw them alive. One might argue that The Purple Testament - the premonition plot notwithstanding - feels rather generic with its World War 2 setting and you could say it's a little dull compared to more overtly fantastical episodes of this show. The ending is not exactly impossible to predict. You just KNOW where this story is going to end up. These quibbles aside though it's decent enough if never what you would describe as the most gripping or memorable episode of this show. This is lesser episode in the excellent season one but a reasonably solid one by most standards nonetheless. The glow on the doomed soldier's faces was achieved by overexposing the film and is rather eerie. B- ELEGY (Director: Douglas Heyes, Writer: Charles Beaumont) "The time is the day after tomorrow. The place: a far corner of the universe. The cast of characters: three men lost amongst the stars, three men sharing the common urgency of all men lost - they're looking for home. And in a moment they'll find home, not a home that is a place to be seen but a strange, unexplainable experience to be felt." In the year 2185, astronauts Kurt Meyers (Jeff Morrow), Captain James Webber (Kevin Hagen), and Peter Kirby (Don Dubbins), run out of fuel and set down on an asteroid where they are perplexed to find very Earthlike conditions. More puzzling than that though is the fact that the people they find are all frozen to the spot as if they are statues. A marching band, violinists, people playing cards, even a beauty contest. Everyone frozen. The only person who does move and speak to them is a jovial old man named Jeremy (Cecil Kellaway). What is this place and who is the old man? Elegy is rather morbid but benefits from the sprightly performance of Kellaway and the central mystery is very Twilight Zone. Frozen people/time capers were done to death in the end by this series, The Outer Limits and things like Star Trek but one must presume it was a tad more novel here in 1960. The atmosphere of this story is good and one is initially intrigued by the predicament of the central characters and the strange place they find themselves in. This reminded me somewhat of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Though an interesting episode, Elegy - frustratingly - doesn't quite become as good as you want it to be. It wrings a decent amount of watchability from the premise though with the bric a brac of a small town in perfect stillness. A strange old man named Jeremy is the only person there able to move and speak and he will provide the resolution to the mystery. The Twilight Zone would return to the 'frozen in time premise' in future shows and while Elegy is no classic it is a fair test run for this recurring plot device. While the concept of this episode is intriguing the actual episode itself never threatens to become especially memorable and so doesn't do the concept justice. One obvious flaw here is that you can plainly see the actors playing the frozen people wobbling and moving at times. Elegy is an episode that probably should have been a lot better than it actually turned to be. For some reason it never satisfies or hits the mark in the way it should. An ok episode but no great shakes. B- MIRROR IMAGE (Director: John Brahm, Writer: Rod Serling) "Millicent Barnes, age twenty-five, young woman waiting for a bus on a rainy November night. Not a very imaginative type is Miss Barnes, not given to undue anxiety or fears, or for that matter even the most temporal flights of fancy. Like most young career women, she has a generic classification as a, quote, girl with a head on her shoulders, end of quote. All of which is mentioned now because in just a moment the head on Miss Barnes's shoulders will be put to a test. Circumstances will assault her sense of reality and a chain of nightmares will put her sanity on a block. Millicent Barnes, who in one minute will wonder is she's going mad." While waiting for a bus at the lonely bus station on a rainy night, Millicent Barnes (Vera Miles) has a most unsettling time with an apparent duplicate of herself... Mirror Image is an enjoyable little episode with good use made of the restrictive bus station setting and some eerie touches that engage the viewer and make the story consistently entertaining and compelling. Rod Serling got the idea for Mirror Image when he spotted someone at an airport who was the exact same height as him with identical clothes and the same briefcase. He thought about how creepy it would be if the person turned around and it was him! The story here feels like a twist on Anthony Armstrong's novel The Strange Case of Mr Pelham (the book inspiring an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and later adapted into an excellent film starring Roger Moore). Vera Miles is nicely cast as the increasingly bemused heroine in Mirror Image and makes a good window through which the story is told. The threat to one's sense of identity is a frequent trope for stories through the history of The Twilight Zone and Mirror Image is clearly one of the superior examples of this familiar fantasy premise. The constrictive bus station location is a suitably strange backdrop for the story. Anyone who has ever waited for a late night bus or train (and most of us have had this experience at some time or other) will testify that public transport stations can sometimes be creepy and lonely places at night. Mirror Image enjoyably taps into that aura. Good support here too by Martin Milner as Paul Grinstead, an amiable businessman also waiting for a bus who is sympathetic to Millicent's plight and tries to help her. B+ THE MONSTERS ARE DUE ON MAPLE STREET (Director: Ronald Winston, Writer: Rod Serling) "Maple Street, U.S.A. Late summer. A tree-lined little world of front porch gliders, barbecues, the laughter of children, and the bell of an ice-cream vendor. At the sound of the roar and the flash of light, it will be precisely 6:43pm on Maple Street. This is Maple Street on a late Saturday afternoon. Maple Street, in the last calm and reflective moment before the monsters came." The residents of a usually peaceful and pleasant street descend into paranoia and witch hunts after a series of strange events which they suspect might involve aliens. Is one of them not who they appear to be? The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street is a Rod Serling meditation on the need to remain civilised. The ensemble of actors work well together as tempers fray and while the science fiction coda is a little hokey it is a lot of fun in the best Twilight Zone tradition. The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street is based around one of Serling's frequent themes of how humanity needs to remain decent and kind if it is to have any future. Civilisation is a fragile thing. Could you count on your neighbour in a real crisis or would they simply be out for themselves and have no hesitation in turning on you? These are rich themes for a Twilight Zone story and work well in The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street. This is enjoyably reminiscent of old science fiction classics like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Invaders From Mars although the real monsters are of course ourselves rather than aliens. Very Cold War paranoia - something that The Twilight Zone and many science fiction writers tapped into at the time. There is of course a less than veiled subtext of McCarthyism in the story too with the people of Maple Street whipping themselves up into a frenzy and panic - that may or may not be completely misplaced - and looking for someone to blame. It's a clever rumination on paranoia and the nature of fear and how we always look for scapegoats when something goes wrong. Claude Atkins is solid as the central character Steve Brand. Brand wants to go into town but is warned that the power shortage is meant to isolate and contain the neighbourhood. It might be dangerous to leave. He isn't convinced though and not impressed by the increasing paranoia. The story here has plenty to say about the inability of people to trust outsiders and think the worst of them. These all, sadly, remain timely themes. The atmosphere is this story is generated by the way electrical malfunctions signify something is wrong or unfathomable forces are at play. It's a device that everything from Close Encounters to Stranger Things has used in the decades that followed Maple Street's transmission. The Monsters are Due On Maple Street is a justifiably famous episode and one that leaves plenty of food for thought. B+ A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE (Director: Ted Post, Writer: Richard Matheson) "You're looking at a tableau of reality, things of substance, of physical material: a desk, a window, a light. These things exist and have dimension. Now this is Arthur Curtis, age thirty-six, who also is real. He has flesh and blood, muscle and mind. But in just a moment we will see how thin a line separates that which we assume to be real with that manufactured inside of a mind." A man named Arthur Curtis (Howard Duff) is baffled when his life and very identity is suggested to be merely a work of fiction... An enjoyably twisty episode from the pen of Richard Matheson with an irresistible opening gambit - a man is in his office at work and it suddenly becomes a film set with everyone treating him as if he is an actor playing a part! They tell Arthur that he is really a drunken actor named Jerry Raigan and that "Arthur Curtis" is just a character he is playing in a film! Arthur is adamant that this is not the case though. He really is a businessman named Arthur Curtis. Curtis must turn detective to establish his own existence or his very sanity may be at risk. This is the sort of story the Twilight Zone always did well and another Twilight Zone story which uses the loss of identity as a concept. A World of Difference is an enjoyable little episode which takes great pleasure in pulling the rug from the audience and its long suffering central character. Duff is perfectly fine as the baffled lead and Matheson's script gives the episode a very firm foundation from which to tell a generally entertaining and clever yarn. You wouldn't say this was an out and out classic but it is definitely worth watching during a Twilight Zone marathon. The concept is a lot of fun and hooks the viewer in right from the start. A clever and enjoyable episode on the whole. B LONG LIVE WALTER JAMESON (Director: Tony Leader, Writer: Charles Beaumont) "You're looking at Act One, Scene One, of a nightmare, one not restricted to witching hours or dark, rainswept nights. Professor Walter Jameson, popular beyond words, who talks of the past as if it were the present, who conjures up the dead as if they were alive. In the view of this man, Professor Samuel Kittridge, Walter Jameson has access to knowledge that couldn't come out of a volume of history, but rather from a book on black magic, which is to say that this nightmare begins at noon." Professor Samuel Kittridge (Edgar Stehli) is very uneasy about Walter Jameson (Kevin McCarthy) - a colleague at work who is engaged to his daughter Susanna Kittridge (Dody Heath). Jameson never seems to age and has knowledge of American Civil War history not to be found in any text book. What is his secret? This is another classic episode for Twilight Zone's mostly wonderful first year. This is a talky episode but a very compelling one with the ever dependable Kevin McCarthy (best known perhaps for Invasion of the Body Snatchers) perfectly cast as the mysterious Jameson. The story moves to a chilling conclusion and draws the viewer in more and more as we reach the final act. Long Live Walter Jameson is an effective tale of how immortality might not be attractive as it seems. Not only would you constantly have to experience those you care about dying but you would also find that life had to be lived on certain constrictive terms. Jameson is a man who has to be careful of how much of himself he exposes to the world at large for fear of his secret becoming known. He has to blend into the background as much as he can and so his life is constrained and compromised. Would immortality be a gift or a curse? Long Live Walter Jameson suggests the latter in this chilling and absorbing yarn. This episode is highly recommended and definitely a contender for the Twilight Zone top table. Long Live Walter Jameson is built around a long conversation between Jameson and Kittridge and a fascinating and absorbing episode with elements of horror. Be careful what you wish for is the message of the story and the wonderful Charles Beaumont takes the premise to its logical and horrible conclusion. A- PEOPLE ARE ALIKE ALL OVER (Director: Mitchell Leisen, Writer: Rod Serling) "You're looking at a species of flimsy little two-legged animal with extremely small heads whose name is man. Warren Marcusson, age thirty-five. Samuel A. Conrad, age thirty-one. They're taking a highway into space, Man unshackling himself and sending his tiny, groping fingers up into the unknown. Their destination is Mars, and in just a moment we'll land there with them...." Astronaut Mark Marcusson (Paul Comi) and scientist Sam Conrad (Roddy McDowall) crash land on the planet Mars and are spooked when something begins tapping on the hull of the downed spacecraft. Will the Martians be friendly? An enjoyable episode that feels over familiar at times (we've already had crash landings on distant worlds more than once and we are only in season one!) but People Are Alike All Over works thanks to the memorable twist ending and the always watchable Roddy McDowall. McDowall is believably terrified when he is left alone and starts to hear noises coming from outside the downed spaceship. The production design here is enjoyably hokey and very 1950s sci-fi at times. There are some very nice sci-fi images in this episode and the dated nature of the ships and costumes has a lot of charm today. The Martian landscapes came from the famed movie Forbiden Planet. This episode was adapted from a story by Paul Fairman called Brothers Beyond the Void. Serling apparently changed the story so that the weaker and more pessimistic Conrad became the central character. It's an idea that works very well. It would certainly be a shame too to have Roddy McDowall in a Twilight Zone and not make him the lead! This episode has some thematic similarities to the classic later episode To Serve Man. In that episode, just as in People Are Alike All Over, the human race turns out to be insignificant and not as clever as they assumed in the wider context of an indifferent universe and other civilisations. I suppose you could probably describe that theme as rather Lovecraftian! I love the opening shot of the two looking out at their rocket ship on Earth. This is a very nicely done and anticipates what will happen later on. B+ EXECUTION (Director: David Orrick McDearmon, Writer: Rod Serling) "Commonplace, if somewhat grim, unsocial event known as a necktie party, the guest of dishonor a cowboy named Joe Caswell, just a moment away from a rope, a short dance several feet off the ground, and then the dark eternity of all evil men. Mr Joe Caswell, who, when the good Lord passed out a conscience, a heart, a feeling for fellow men, must have been out for a beer and missed out. Mr Joe Caswell, in the last quiet moment of a violent life." A dangerous criminal named Joe Carswell (Albert Salmi) vanishes in 1880 as he is about to be hung and is transported to the present day in the laboratory of Professor Sean Mannion (Russell Johnson). Mannion has used time travel to save Carswell's life but he soon begins to suspect that maybe that wasn't the most brilliant idea in the world... Despite the interesting premise and the always dependable presence of Albert Salmi, this feels like the first misfire of season one and becomes more unsatisfying as it progresses - despite the symmetry of the resolution. The lab of Professor Mannion is never that convincing and makes the episode feel sillier than it needed to feel considering the weighty themes of justice and capital punishment. The story is really about the inevitability of fate and rehabilitation of criminals is another obvious theme here. Carswell is pretty much beyond saving. He'd stab you in the back even if you were nice to him! The idea of a man from 1880 encountering the present day (1960 in this case) is fun on paper but doesn't really translate to a fun viewing experience here. It's quite a dull episode ultimately and never really grabs you in the way that the very best Twilight Zone episodes do. The ending is somewhat predictable too so leaves you feeling unsatisfied (though one might argue that it was the ONLY ending they could have gone for). This episode is a nice idea on paper but the (ahem) execution here doesn't quite work. C+ THE BIG TALL WISH (Director: Ron Winston, Writer: Rod Serling) "In this corner of the universe, a prizefighter named Bolie Jackson, one hundred eighty-three pounds and an hour and a half away from a comeback at St. Nick's Arena. Mr.Bolie Jackson, who by the standards of his profession is an ageing, over-the-hill relic of what was, and who now sees a reflection of a man who has left too many pieces of his youth in too many stadiums for too many years before too many screaming people. Mr Bolie Jackson, who might do well to look for some gentle magic in the hard-surfaced glass that stares back at him." Fading boxer Bolie Jackson (Ivan Dixon) is aided by a magical wish made by a boy named Henry (Steven Perry). However, a belief in magic will be required if the wish is to come true.. A Rod Serling penned boxing themed episode sounds like a can't miss but The Big Tall Wish is a strangely forgettable and sentimental episode that gains most of its watchability from the excellent work by the all black cast (which was obviously something of a rarity at the time). It's pleasant enough but never as magical or moving as Serling strives for it to be and so consequently A Big Tall Wish can't help coming across as, well, rather dull in the end. This is not one of those episodes that you'll find yourself rushing back to in Twilight Zone marathons. Given a choice there are countless Twilight Zone episodes you'd rather be watching again than The Big Tall Wish. This is a whimsical but sometimes downbeat drama and it never really lives up to the sum of its parts. It's definitely not one of Serling's best scripts. The Big Tall Wish is ok but the story leans towards cliche and never becomes terribly interesting or engaging. I personally just never become immersed in this story much. Interesting trivia - the lead role in The Big Tall Wish was supposed to be played by the great real life boxer (and actor) Archie Moore but that casting obviously never transpired in the end. Ivan Dixon is very good though as Moore's replacement. C+ A NICE PLACE TO VISIT (Director: John Brahm, Writer: Charles Beaumont) "Portrait of a man at work, the only work he's ever done, the only work he knows. His name is Henry Francis Valentine but he calls himself Rocky, because that's the way his life has been - rocky and perilous and uphill at a dead run all the way. He's tired now, tired of running or wanting, of waiting for the breaks that come to others but never to him, never to Rocky Valentine. A scared, angry little man. He thinks it's all over now but he's wrong. For Rocky Valentine, it's just the beginning." A sleazy low-life criminal named Rocky Valentine (Larry Blyden) has all of his wishes granted by the mysterious Pip (Sebastian Cabot). Pip claims to be the guardian angel of wishes. But can he be trusted? A Nice Place to Visit is not a classic but it's pretty good fun all the same with a nice twist in the tale. Larry Blyden is not the most convincing hood in the world (in fact, his performance is pretty terrible but then maybe he was just asked to play it broad?) but his somewhat over the top approach works in the context of the cartoon gangster world depicted in the story and Sebastian Cabot is enjoyable as Rocky's mysterious guardian. It's best to think of this as a more comic episode of The Twilight Zone and in that context it's actually not that bad at all and ambles along in fairly engaging fashion. The twist is not impossible to see coming but the story does have a classic Twilight Zone quality in that you should be careful what you wish for. If you were literally given anything you wanted (as Rocky does in A Nice Place To Visit) wouldn't life sort of lose its meaning and any sense of purpose? You would be left with nothing to aim for and have no motivation to improve yourself as a person. If you can get past the broad performance of the lead actor this is worth a watch but don't expect it to be a classic because it plainly isn't. A Nice Place to Visit is a modestly amusing little episode but not much more than that. Trivia - the part of Rocky Valentine was apparently written with Mickey Rooney in mind. He was obviously unavailable though. B- NIGHTMARE AS A CHILD (Director: Alvin Ganzer, Writer: Rod Serling) "Month of November, hot chocolate, and a small cameo of a child's face, imperfect only in its solemnity. And these are the improbable ingredients to a human emotion, an emotion, say, like fear. But in a moment this woman, Helen Foley, will realize fear. She will understand what are the properties of terror. A little girl will lead her by the hand and walk with her into a nightmare." A teacher named Helen Foley (Janice Rule) has an unforgettable encounter with a little girl called Markie (Terry Burnham) in her apartment building. Markie seems to have intimate knowledge of Helen's past and seems determined to remind her of something that happened a long time ago... Nightmare as a Child is something of a slow burn but becomes quite touching in the last act - even though you will probably guess where we are heading long before we actually get there. The unlocking of a childhood memory to solve a crime is not the most original premise but Nightmare As A Child has enough atmosphere and savvy to make it work relatively well here. Flaws in this episode are that the lead actors (including the child) are not brilliant and the direction is a little on the flat side. This doesn't have the style of the best Twilight Zone episodes. The actual story is interesting enough though and quite a spooky aura is generated. While you wouldn't say that Nightmare as a Child is a classic episode you will become invested enough to want to see it through to the end. This is definitely worth a watch but you certainly wouldn't place it up there with the very best episodes of season one. Nightmare as a Child is an interesting episode but not a great one. The main flaw is that Janice Rule is never as sympathetic as the story suggests she should be. The actual mystery though is generally fine and one that somewhat mitigates the flaws in the cast and direction. B A STOP AT WILLOUGHBY (Director: Robert Parrish, Writer: Rod Serling) "This is Gart Williams, age thirty-eight, a man protected by a suit of armor all held together by one bolt. Just a moment ago, someone removed the bolt, and Mr Williams's protection fell away from him and left him a naked target. He's been cannonaded this afternoon by all the enemies of his life. His insecurity has shelled him, his sensitivity has straddled him with humiliation, his deep-rooted disquiet about his own worth has zeroed in on him, landed on target, and blown him apart. Mr Gart Williams, ad agency exec, who in just a moment will move into the Twilight Zone, in a desperate search for survival." Gart Williams (James Daly) is a stressed executive who hates the modern world and is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. When he falls asleep on the train he awakes in the beautiful and anachronistic town of Willoughby... One of the greatest of all Twilight Zone episodes, A Stop at Willoughby taps into one of Serling's most recurring themes: the yearning to find some escape from the pressures of the modern world and reality as a whole. Who hasn't dreamed of escaping from the rat race and experiencing a simpler way of life? Rod Serling definitely did. Willoughby feels like a place from another century and - unlike the modern world - Gart is always appreciated by everyone there, the pace of life blissfully unhurried. Everyone would surely like to have their own Willoughby to go and escape into. James Daly is excellent as the lead here and draws our sympathy. Gart's boss Mr Misrell (Howard Smith) is a humourless bully and his wife Jane (Patricia Donahue) is a nagging shrew who loathes her husband for his lack of ambition and barely hides her contempt for him. The town of Willoughby by the way was an MGM set built for a film called Meet Me in St Louis. It makes a nice backdrop to the story. It's shot in a dreamy fashion and looks like something out of Huckleberry Finn. A Stop at Willoughby is a great episode with a moving and haunting finale. This is like a companion piece to Walking Distance and once again incredibly moving and genuine because it feels like Serling is writing about himself. This is one of the great Twilight Zones of this or any other season. A THE CHASER (Director: Dougls Heyes, Writer: Robert Presnell Jr) "Mr Roger Shackleforth. Age: youthful twenties. Occupation: being in love. Not just in love, but madly, passionately, illogically, miserably, all-consumingly in love, with a young woman named Leila who has a vague recollection of his face and even less than a passing interest. In a moment you'll see a switch, because Mr Roger Shackleforth, the young gentleman so much in love, will take a short but very meaningful journey into the Twilight Zone." Roger Shackleworth (George Grizzard) is in love with neighbour Leila (Patricia Barry) but she is indifferent to him and so visits Professor Deamon (John McIntire) to get a love potion. This being he Twilight Zone you should - as ever - be careful what you wish for... A much lighter, throwaway episode, The Chaser feels weak compared to much of the other fare on offer in season one but the cast is good and - while predictable - the arc of the story is fun. Deamon's library is nicely designed with some surreal flourishes. This tale was enduring enough to feature again in Tales from the Crypt in the 1990s. George Grizzard is good here and this would not be his last visit to the Twilight Zone. While you've seen variations of this story before (and since!) it works well enough. Roger is delighted when the potion makes the object of his desire fall in love with him but that love soon becomes constrictive and annoying. The potion works like a charm and Leila is soon absolutely besotted with Roger. However, her constant devotion and cloying reluctance to be apart from him even for a second soon becomes suffocating and unbearable. Roger must go back to Deamon and see if there is another potion that can provide a solution to this problem. The Chaser passes the time and is pleasant enough for what it is but all the same this is probably not a Twilight Zone episode you'll find yourself rushing back to in a hurry once you've seen it. It's a middling affair really. It's not bad but it's not terribly memorable either. B- A PASSAGE FOR TRUMPET (Director: Don Medford, Writer: Rod Serling) "Joey Crown, musician with an odd, intense face, whose life is a quest for impossible things like flowers in concrete or like trying to pluck a note of music out of the air and put it under glass to treasure. Joey Crown, musician with an odd, intense face, who in a moment will try to leave the Earth and discover the middle ground - the place we call the Twilight Zone." A lonely, down at heel and drunken musician named Joey Crown (Jack Klugman) decides to end it all but then encounters an angel called Gabe (John Anderson)... An unashamedly sentimental but touching episode that marks the first of Jack Klugman's appearances in The Twilight Zone. Klugman was never less than superb in the series and his performance here is typically powerful and committed. The story has a strong jazzy atmosphere and a rich surreal atmosphere when Joey realise that only Gabe can see him. The story here is pretty familiar (Joey thinks he isn't important and his life has been wasted but he learns that even the most seemingly ordinary people are important and special - basically It's a Wonderful Life all over again) but it is very touching and it helps of course to have Klugman as the lead. His mere presence makes the episode more compelling. There's not an awful lot to dislike about A Passage for Trumpet. It's just a nice little gentler Twilight Zone episode that is trying to warm the heart rather than scare you and in this aim it succeeds very nicely. This is a moving episode with the first of Jack Klugman's wonderful Twilight Zone contributions. The monologues that Serling gives Klugman would have seemed overwritten in the hands of a lesser actor but they work beautifully here. B+ MR BEVIS (Director: William Ashner, Writer: Rod Serling) "In the parlance of the twentieth century, this is an oddball. His name is James BW Bevis, and his tastes lean toward stuffed animals, zither music, professional football, Charles Dickens, moose heads, carnivals, dogs, children, and young ladies. Mr Bevis is accident prone, a little vague, a little discombobulated, with a life that possesses all the security of a floating crap game. But this can be said of our Mr Bevis: without him, without his warmth, without his kindness, the world would be a considerably poorer place, albeit perhaps a little saner. Should it not be obvious by now, James BW Bevis is a fixture in his own private, optimistic, hopeful little world, a world which has long ceased being surprised by him. James BW Bevis, on whom Dame Fortune will shortly turn her back, but not before she gives him a paste in the mouth. Mr James BW Bevis, just one block away from the Twilight Zone." The eccentric Mr Bevis (Orson Bean) suffers a run of misfortune and is visited by a guardian angel (Henry Jones) - who teaches him that happiness is about being true to yourself and not about money and material possessions... The first truly awful episode in series one, Mr Bevis is a comic misfire that feels out of place in The Twilight Zone. This was conceived as the pilot for a possible stand alone show with no lesser figure than Burgess Meredith as the lead but Meredith, wisely perhaps, passed on the offer. One can't really imagine that the adventures of Mr Bevis would have sustained much interest for viewers as getting through this single episode is enough of a trial. It's probably fair to say that comedy was not Rod Serling's strong point and this episode is not only unfunny but pretty tedious in the end. Another thing that doesn't help is that this early into The Twilight Zone we are already starting to feel as if we've had one too many of these guardian angel episodes. Orson Bean does his best in the lead role here but soon becomes tiresome - as indeed does the episode as a whole. This is definitely not an episode you'll have anywhere near the top of the pile whenever you do a Twilight Zone marathon. In fact, it's probably one you'll skip altogether. Mr Bevis is a tedious comic relief episode that is probably best avoided. D+ THE AFTER HOURS (Director: Douglas Heyes, Writer: Rod Serling) "Express elevator to the ninth floor of a department store, carrying Miss Marsha White on a most prosaic, ordinary, run of the mill errand. Miss Marsha White on the ninth floor, specialities department, looking for a gold thimble. The odds are she'll find it, but there are even better odds that she'll find something else, because this isn't just a department store. This happens to be the Twilight Zone." Marsha White (Anne Francis) is a young women who visits a large and swanky department store to purchase a gold thimble for her mother. However, Marsha's shopping trip turns out to be a surreal and surprising experience indeed... One of the best Twilight Zone episodes in the history of the show, The After Hours is beautifully, hauntingly (that last act is amazing) directed by Douglas Heyes and has perfect casting with Anne Francis superb as Marsha - our bemused heroine, out shopping for a thimble and discovering a 13th floor in the store that isn't supposed to exist. The twist is great and the compelling atmosphere is wonderfully sustained. There's good support by Elizabeth Allen as a snooty saleslady and John Cornwell is nice casting too as the elevator. You wouldn't think that a department store would be so ripe for a Twilight Zone mystery but it makes a fantastic backdrop for the story here. This is a darkly magical half an hour of television and simply brilliant at its best. If one had to recommended a handful of Twilight Zone episodes for anyone new to the show to watch first then The After Hours would definitely be a very strong candidate to go on that list. The final revelations are handled very well and the whole episode is masterfully choreographed and rewards the viewer with interest in the final third. It may take until the after hours but Marsha will eventually discover the truth about the store and herself. This is one of the great Twilight Zone episodes and spooky stylish fun all the way. A THE MIGHTY CASEY (Director: Robert Parrish and Alvin Ganzer, Writer: Rod Serling) "What you're looking at is a ghost, once alive but now deceased. Once upon a time, it was a baseball stadium that housed a major-league ballclub known as the Hoboken Zephyrs. Now it houses nothing but memories and a wind that stirs in the high grass of what was once an outfield, a wind that sometimes bears a faint, ghostly resemblance to the roar of a crowd that once sat here. We're back in time now, when the Hoboken Zephyrs were still a part of the National League and this mausoleum of memories was an honest-to-Pete stadium. But since this is strictly a story of make-believe, it has to start this way. Once upon a time, in Hoboken, New Jersey, it was tryout day. And though he's not yet on the field, you're about to meet a most unusual fellow, a left-handed pitched named Casey." A struggling baseball team is given a powerful android pitcher named Casey (Robert Sorrells). When he is banned for not being human, Dr Stillman (Abraham Sofaer) gives Casy a heart and he qualifies again. But now that he has a heart will Casey want to throw his highly dangerous fastballs anymore? This is a Serling meditation on what it means to be human (Casey loses his unsympathetic competitive edge after receiving the most human of organs) but the theme somewhat lost in this forgettable baseball comic drama. The end result is a dull Twilight Zone - although production troubles apparently dogged this one. This episode was originally shot with Paul Douglas in the Jack Warden role. Douglas though looked ill while shooting it and died of a heart attack a few days after it wrapped. Serling decided (at the expense of his Cayuga Productions rather than CBS) to reshoot the episode with Jack Warden but you wonder why he bothered. Robert Sorrells is rather awful as the robot and you always struggle to work out how exactly this story even got the green light in the first place. It's like they needed another episode fast so Serling dug up some unfinished and muddled script he found at the bottom of his drawer. The Mighty Casey is one of the more boring episodes in the first season and - alas - joins the likes of Mr Bevis and Execution as something you won't be in a rush to watch again. Even with the modest running time of The Twilight Zone this episode still feels like something of a chore to get through. It's simply dull and forgettable. C A WORLD OF HIS OWN (Director: Ralph Nelson, Writer: Richard Matheson) "The home of Mr Gregory West, one of America's most noted playwrights. The office of Mr Gregory West. Mr Gregory West - shy, quiet, and at the moment very happy. Mary - warm, affectionate. And the final ingredient - Mrs Gregory West." Victoria West (Phyllis Kirk) is surprised when she comes home and finds her husband Gregory (Keenan Wynn) enjoying a drink with a beautiful blonde woman named Mary (Mary La Roche). When she barges into his study though she finds no trace of the mystery woman at all. Gregory explains what has happened. If he describes someone or something into his dictation machine they or it will appear in real life. To make them vanish again all he has to do is throw the tape into the fire. Mary is someone he described into the machine. Victoria doesn't believe him but he demonstrates that it's all true. A World of His Own is perhaps too lightweight for its own good at times (Rod Serling even makes a comic cameo at the end) but it's likeable enough with the cast decent value and plenty of twists from the pen of Richard Matheson. The story feels very familiar now (Stephen King's Word Processor of the Gods later used a similar conceit) but the dictation machine escapades are an amusing enough way to end what has - with one of two misteps along the way - been a very impressive first year for The Twilight Zone. As far as comic episodes of Twilight Zone go A World of His Own is one of the less grating ones and although you'd hardly call this a classic it does at least pass the time and supply some entertainment. I'm not sure though that A World of His Own something you would revisit much - if at all. A World of His Own is modest fun but never much more than that. It's a middling end to season one but by no means a complete clunker. B- The Second Season 1960/61 KING NINE WILL NOT RETURN (Director: Buzz Kulik, Writer: Rod Serling) "This is Africa, 1943. War spits out its violence overhead and the sandy graveyard swallows it up. Her name is King Nine, B-25, medium bomber, Twelfth Air Force. On a hot, still morning she took off from Tunisia to bomb the southern tip of Italy. An errant piece of flak tore a hole in a wing tank and, like a wounded bird, this is where she landed, not to return on this day, or any other day." Captain James Emery (Bob Cummings) wakes up in the North African desert during World War 2 next to the wreckage of his downed B-25 medium bomber. His crew however have mysteriously vanished... This is a slightly disappointing start to the second year of The Twilight Zone. King Nine Will Not Return has a compelling premise and starts well with the desert intrigue - paranoia soon heightened by the strange mystery that Emery finds himself in. However, the resolution feels like something of a cop-out and the little twist at the end was unnecessary and doesn't make much sense. The premise makes this sound like a terrific episode but it never becomes as good as you want it to be and sort of falls apart in the end. Bob Cummings has to do the heavy lifting in this episode in terms of acting and he's very good but he can't quite mitigate the failure of the script to sustain a satisfying mystery and coda. King Nine Will Not Return is a decent mystery but one that unravels in the second act - which is a shame because the premise had a lot of potential. King Nine Will Not Return evokes the first ever Twilight Zone episode Where Is Everybody? (central character who finds himself all alone in bizarre circumstances with memory loss) but doesn't reach the same surreal heights. This was based by the way on a true story. The American B-24 Bomber Lady Be Good vanished in 1943 and was later found in 1959 in the Libyan desert by a team of British geologists. The plane's water and ammunition stocks were full but there was not a single trace of the crew anywhere. B- THE MAN IN THE BOTTLE (Director: Don Medford, Writer: Rod Serling) "Mr and Mrs Arthur Castle, gentle and infinitely patient people, whose lives have been a hope chest with a rusty lock and a lost set of keys. But in just a moment that hope chest will be opened, and an improbable phantom will try to bedeck the drabness of these two people's failure-laden lives with the gold and precious stones of fulfilment. Mr and Mrs Arthur Castle, standing on the outskirts and about to enter the Twilight Zone." Arthur Castle (Luthor Adler) and his wife Edna (Vivi Janiss) run an antiques shop and take pity on an old woman trying to sell a worthless bottle. Despite being fairly broke themselves, they give her a dollar for it and the bottle produces a dapper genie (Joseph Ruskin) who tells them they now have four wishes. After wishing for some cracked glass to be mended (just to prove the genie isn't a fake) they ponder what to do with the remaining three wishes. They soon discover though that - naturally - you should be very careful what you wish for in fantasy anthology shows... The Man In The Bottle is middling episode that riffs on the famous story The Monkey's Paw. This is not bad as far as magical genie episodes go in this anthology shows but always feels a little too pat and predictable to really elevate it too highly in the Twilight Zone pantheon. The main problem is that it feels too derivative as this is the sort of story you feel like you've seen millions of times in these types of shows. The execution is also very lightweight and bland. It's watchable and has its moments but this is definitely not something that lodges in the memory or ever really grabs your attention. The Man In The Bottle is not terrible but it is decidedly average and continues what has - thus far - been an underwhelming start to season two. This is a pleasant enough episode that unfortunately never really goes anywhere. The best thing here is Joseph Ruskin as the suave but somewhat menacing genie. After watching this episode you could definitely be forgiven for starting to hope that genie in a bottle capers are now given a rest in the show for a while. The Man in the Bottle is probably worth watching but it probably won't figure too highly on any Twilight Zone rewatch piles. B- NERVOUS MAN IN A FOUR DOLLAR ROOM (Director: Douglas Heyes, Writer: Rod Serling) "This is Mr Jackie Rhoades, age thirty-four, and where some men leave a mark of their lives as a record of their fragmentary existence on Earth, this man leaves a blot, a dirty, discolored blemish to document a cheap and undistinguished sojourn amongst his betters. What you're about to watch in this room is a strange, mortal combat between a man and himself, for in just a moment Mr Jackie Rhoades, whose life has been given over to fighting adversaries, will find his most formidable opponent in a cheap hotel room that is in reality the outskirts of the Twilight Zone." Minor league criminal Jackie Roades (Joe Mantill) is ordered to murder someone by his boss and as he agonises over the task in his hotel room room his alter-ego begins to communicate through the mirror. The mirror contains a more ruthless and confident version of Jackie and seems intent on taking control... Nervous Man In A Four Dollar Room is a fairly strong episode that makes creative use of the constrictive setting to induce paranoia and tension as Jackie struggles to balance the difference sides of his personality - most obviously of course the repressed areas of his id. Douglas Heyes makes excellent use of mirrors and internal monologues and Joe Mantill is well cast as the nervous protagonist. Nervous Man In A Four Dollar Room would probably stretch your patience somewhat and outstay its welcome if it was an hour long but it works well as a half hour episode and the premise, acting, and direction are all strong enough to hold one's attention and make you interested to see how it turns out in the end. You wouldn't call Nervous Man In A Four Dollar Room a classic but it is a very solid episode that is definitely worth watch. This episode is also one that repays a repeat visit. It's definitely an improvement on the first two episodes of season two. Nervous Man In A Four Dollar Room makes nice use of rear projection and is a decent meditation on the internal struggle between different facets of one's personality. B A THING ABOUT MACHINES (Director: David Orrick McDearmon, Writer: Rod Serling) "This is Mr Bartlett Finchley, age forty-eight, a practicing sophisticate who writes very special and very precious things for gourmet magazines and the like. He's a bachelor and a recluse with few friends, only devotees and adherents to the cause of tart sophistry. He has no interests save whatever current annoyances he can put his mind to. He has no purpose to his life except the formulation of day-to-day opportunities to vent his wrath on mechanical contrivances of an age he abhors. In short, Mr Bartlett Finchley is a malcontent, born either too late or too early in the century, and who in just a moment will enter a realm where muscles and the will to fight back are not limited to human beings. Next stop for M. Bartlett Finchley - the Twilight Zone." Snobbish bachelor Bartlett Finchley (Richard Haydn) has a particular and often violent distaste for the technological bric a brac of the modern world. The machines decide to get revenge... A Thing About Machines is a silly episode that is easy to dismiss but Richard Haydn enjoyably chews the scenery as Finchley and it's fun when the inanimate objects begin to turn on their unsuspecting owner - with even his car getting in on the act and trying to run him down. What negates A Thing About Machines though is the flat direction and general aimlessness of Serling's script. This episode might actually have worked better had it not been tongue-in-cheek and been played straight as a horror yarn (though to be fair to Serling it would probably be hard to make a straight horror episode featuring a man being attacked by his electrical razor). This episode passes the time but it's very silly and throwaway and doesn't have much ambition. A Thing About Machines definitely feels like Twilight Zone in third gear and treading water. It's not an episode that anyone will dredge up when talking about the best entries in this classic show. The Twilight Zone would make a similar episode in a later season called You Drive. Out of the two episodes, You Drive is more memorable than A Thing About Machines. B- THE HOWLING MAN (Director: Douglas Heyes, Writer: Charles Beaumont) "The prostrate form of Mr David Ellington, scholar, seeker of truth and, regrettably, finder of truth. A man who will shortly arise from his exhaustion to confront a problem that has tormented mankind since the beginning of time. A man who knocked on a door seeking sanctuary and found instead the outer edges of the Twilight Zone." David Ellington (HM Wynant) is a tourist in Europe who takes shelter in an old castle during a storm. The religious sect who run the castle have what appears to be an ordinary man held hostage. Ellington is appalled by this and protests but is told the hostage is the Devil... One of the great Twilight Zone episodes, The Howling Man induces a rich sense of atmosphere from the opening scenes and never allows this Gothic aura to relent. Wynant is a good window into the story as Ellington and the episode builds to a compelling last act. This sharp turn towards classic horror for The Twilight Zone reaps rich dividends here. John Carradine is great here as Brother Jerome - the leader of the sect. Ellington has to decide who he trusts the most. The apparently innocent man being held captive or Brother Jerome. The drenched, cold, hungry and exhausted Ellington wanders inside looking for shelter but hears a howling noise coming from somewhere. When he investigates he finds a man (Robin Hughes) locked in a cell down below. The man seems perfectly ordinary and harmless though, cultured even, and tells Ellington he is being held prisoner against his will just because he kissed someone in public and that the sect who run the castle are insane. Are these monks dangerous fanatics who have taken their beliefs too far or could the man really be (gulp) the Devil himself? The captive man is only kept in place by a piece of wood called The Staff of Truth. Why hasn't the captive man simply removed the wood if this is all mystical mumbo jumbo? That's the fun of the story and where the tension comes in. The Howling Man is very Gothic and mysterious and an excellent episode. It's a really compelling little yarn and the vivid sense of atmosphere is fantastic. The Howling Man is terrific stuff and the first classic episode of season three. A- THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER (Director: Douglas Heyes, Writer: Rod Serling) "Suspended in time and space for a moment, your introduction to Miss Janet Tyler, who lives in a very private world of darkness, a universe whose dimensions are the size, thickness, length of a swath of bandages that cover her face. In a moment we'll go back into this room and also in a moment we'll look under those bandages, keeping in mind, of course, that we're not to be surprised by what we see, because this isn't just a hospital, and this patient 307 is not just a woman. This happens to be the Twilight Zone, and Miss Janet Tyler, with you, is about to enter it." Janet Tyler (Maxine Stuart) lies in a darkened hospital under bandages anxiously waiting to see if her hideously disfigured face has finally been altered enough to stop her being a societal outcast. But what constitutes beauty in this strange future society? The Eye of the Beholder is justifiably famous for the twist when we get the big reveal and finally see Janet's face for the first time - not to mention the faces of those around her. The build up to the revelation is a little on the slow side but it is expertly directed by Heyes and the haunting music by Bernard Herrmann makes for a perfect backdrop. If the twist takes you by surprise (in that you haven't guessed it and haven't been spoiled) then this is definitely one of the more memorable twists in the history of the show - and that's saying something because Twilight Zone is obviously famed for its twist endings. This story is very dark (quite literally!) in that it plays out in a darkened hospital with great use of shadows and limited light. This draws us into the episode and makes us wonder what on earth is going on and it also adds an unsettling ambience to the whole piece. The story here is about our perceptions of beauty and the pressure to conform in society or look a certain way. As ever with The Twilight Zone, these themes remain depressingly pertinent even today. This is a superbly atmospheric episode and though a little sedate in terms of pacing it is very absorbing and intriguing. B+ NICK OF TIME (Director: Richard L Bare, Writer: Richard Matheson) "The hand belongs to Mr Don S Carter, male member of a honeymoon team en route across the Ohio countryside to New York City. In one moment, they will be subjected to a gift most humans never receive in a lifetime. For one penny, they will be able to look into the future. The time is now, the place is a little diner in Ridgeview, Ohio, and what this young couple doesn't realize is that this town happens to lie on the outskirts of the Twilight Zone." Don Carter (William Shatner) and Pat (Patricia Breslin) are newly married and on their way to New York. They take a rest stop in a small town and go into a diner to get a sandwich and some iced coffee. However, their stay in the diner becomes prolonged when Dan becomes obsessed with a penny fortune telling machine on the counter. Dan begins to believe that this machine really can predict the future... Nick of Time doesn't sound that exciting from a brief synopsis but it actually turns out to be a fantastic Twilight Zone episode. The little demonic fortune telling machine becomes like a third character in the story as it begins to exert a strange hold on Don - much to the annoyance of his wife. What's great about this episode is that it maintains an element of ambiguity and is more about the power of suggestion and our weakness for being superstitious - as opposed to being overtly fantastical. Nothing is too obvious or overt in this story. This is a superb little episode and very subtle. The little diner is a great backdrop for the story and William Shatner is very good here in an early role. Shatner is pretty straight here and doesn't ham his part at all. Nick of Time is surprisingly gripping and fascinating in the end and definitely an episode you should make time for in any Twilight Zone marathon. The key question in this story is whether the predicting powers of the machine are real or purely a figment of Don's imagination. This question is the foundation on which a great little yarn is spun. Nick of Time lacks the fireworks and scope of other Twilight Zones but is just as spooky and compelling because it's all about suggestion. Shatner and Breslin are surprisingly convincing as the newlyweds with believable chemistry together. A- THE LATENESS OF THE HOUR (Director: Jack Smeight, Writer: Rod Serling) "The residence of Dr William Loren, which is in reality a menagerie for machines. We're about to discover that sometimes the product of man's talent and genius can walk amongst us untouched by the normal ravages of time. These are Dr. Loren's robots, built to functional as well as artistic perfection. But in a moment Dr William Loren, wife and daughter will discover that perfection is relative, that even robots have to be paid for, and very shortly will be shown exactly what is the bill." Dr Loren (John Hoyt) and his wife (Irene Tedrow) live in a large house with lifelike android servants he has created. Their daughter Jana (Ingar Stevens) is increasingly unhappy though in this house and tells her father that if he doesn't get rid of the androids she will leave. Will he concede to this ultimatum? This is the first episode in season two that was shot on video tape rather than film. Six episodes in all were shot on videotape in what was obviously a cost cutting experiment. Unavoidably, the three videotape episodes look cheap and strange. They just don't feel right. We miss the beautiful film episodes whenever we get one of these cheap looking videotape episodes. That said, The Lateness Of The Hour is mildly interesting and the cast (especially John Hoyt) are pretty good. The premise is sort of intriguing and there is a creepy atmosphere from the concept alone (it would obviously be pretty weird to live in a spooky house full of realistic robot servants). A weakness here though is that the twist is not exactly impossible to predict. I felt like I knew fairly on where the story was heading and my suspicions were all confirmed. The Lateness of the Hour is unlikely to pull the rug out from under the viewer and subvert your expectations. All in all this is a middling affair but still quite watchable all the same. Perhaps this episode might be slightly better regarded if it had been shot on film? It's possible. Despite its rather crude appearance on videotape, The Lateness Of The Hour is solid enough - thanks in no small part to the polished performance of John Hoyt and the screenplay by Serling: B- THE TROUBLE WITH TEMPLETON (Director: Buzz Kulik, Writer: E Jack Neuman) "Pleased to present for your consideration Mr Booth Templeton, serious and successful star of over thirty Broadway plays, who is not quite all right today. Yesterday and its memories is what he wants, and yesterday is what he'll get. Soon his years and his troubles will descend on him in an avalanche. In order not to be crushed, Mr Booth Templeton will escape from his theater and his world and make his debut on another stage in another world that we call the Twilight Zone." Booth Templeton (Brian Aherne) is a veteran actor who feels increasingly unhappy in the modern world. He pines for the roaring twenties when he was in his prime. What he pines for most of all is his late wife Laura (Pippa Scott). Templeton leaves the theatre one night after an argument and finds himself transported back to 1927. He tracks down his beloved wife but it seems that things in the old days were not quite so golden as he remembers... The Trouble with Templeton is a wonderfully moving and stylish episode that has one of the greatest scenes in the history of the show. This is the nightclub sequence where everything freezes and Templeton is led to believe that all is not as he remembers. What makes this story moving and interesting is that Templeton suffers from a malady we are all prone to - which is to be romantic about the past and sometimes feel out of place in the modern world. Change is inevitable but that doesn't mean it is easy. It could be though that we view the past through rose coloured spectacles because we only remember the good stuff. Maybe it wasn't as great as we remember. The story here is quite complex because Templeton's take on the past might actually be accurate but in order to protect him he can't be made aware of that. This is a beautifully bittersweet Twilight Zone story with a great last act. The Trouble with Templeton is a beautifully directed and poignant episode with a wonderful performance by Aherne as the troubled actor. Look out for a young Sydney Pollack by the way as the brash theatre director who rubs Templeton up the wrong way. Thank heavens by the way that The Trouble with Templeton wasn't one of those cheap looking videotape episodes. That would have been an absolute crime! B+ A MOST UNUSUAL CAMERA (Director: John Rich, Writer: Rod Serling) "A hotel suite that in this instance serves as a den of crime, the aftermath of a rather minor event to be noted on a police blotter, an insurance claim, perhaps a three-inch box on page twelve of the evening paper. Small addenda to be added to the list of the loot: a camera, a most unimposing addition to the flotsam and jetsam that it came with, hardly worth mentioning really, because cameras are cameras, some expensive, some purchasable at five-and-dime stores. But this camera, this one's unusual, because in just a moment we'll watch it inject itself into the destinies of three people. It happens to be a fact that the pictures that it takes can only be developed in the Twilight Zone." Chester Diedrich (Fred Clark) and wife Paula (Jean Carson) steal a cmera and soon deduce that said camera has magical properties. The camera takes photographs which predict what will happen five minutes into the future. Paula's jailbird brother Woodward (Adam Williams) arrives on the scene and suggests they use the camera to get rich by predicting the winners at the horse racing track. However, with a dwindling amount of photographs left at their disposal these thieves are soon squabbling and inevitably about to experience the Twilight Zone at the sharp end... The premise of A Most Unusual Camera is hardly original (the story feels like a riff on The Monkey's Paw and is also quite similar to a previous Twilight Zone story called What You Need) but it's at least interesting enough to at least hold your attention. One problem this episode has is that it's all played in a jocular and over the top fashion when it probably would have worked much better as a straight mystery. The performances are over the top and you feel like the cast are trying too hard. The cast here definitely seem to believe they are in a comedy but comedy was not, as we've noted before, Rod Serling's greatest strength. This is a heavily flawed episode for all of this reasons but I can't find in myself to be too harsh about A Most Unusual Camera because at least it wasn't boring - mostly thanks to the fantasy concept which drives the story. One is modestly engaged and interested throughout the episode and this does mitigate some (if not all) of the flaws in the acting and execution of A Most Unusual Camera. This is fun as far as it goes but not an episode you'd find yourself returning to in a hurry. There are many other episodes that are much more worthy of your time. B- NIGHT OF THE MEEK (Director: Jack Smight, Writer: Rod Serling) "This is Mr Henry Corwin, normally unemployed, who once a year takes the lead role in the uniquely popular American institute, that of department-store Santa Claus in a road company version of 'The Night Before Christmas.' But in just a moment Mr Henry Corwin, ersatz Santa Claus, will enter a strange kind of North Pole which is one part the wondrous spirit of Christmas and one part the magic that can only be found in the Twilight Zone." A drunken department store Santa named Henry Corwin (Art Carney) is fired from his job for always being sozzled. He drowns his sorrows in the nearest bar (still wearing his tatty Santa suit) and then finds a strange bag that can magically dispense any gift he wants. Now invested with the real powers of Santa, Corwin decides to spread as much joy and generosity as he can with this magical find... Night of the Meek was one of Rod Serling's favourite Twilight Zones and he apparently used to screen it at Christmas for his friends and family. It's certainly a nice episode and a pleasant experience but it does become a trifle cloying and sentimental at times. Still, I suppose you'd have to be a real life Scrooge to complain abut this one too much. It's just a nice charming Christmas yarn where a man gets a chance to bring some magical Christmas spirit into the lives of 'hopeless and dreamless'. It's a shame really that Night of the Meek is one of the dreaded videotape episodes because the seasonal sets are very nice and cosy and definitely would have been even better if shot on film. Night of the Meek is probably a little overrated in the Twilight Zone canon but it is generally an enjoyable experience and Art Carney is very good as our unexpected Christmas hero. This is somewhat saccharine and obvious but you'd have to have a heart of stone not to enjoy Night of the Meek. One to watch on Christmas Eve. B DUST (Director: Douglas Heyes, Writer: Rod Serling) "There was a village, built of crumbling clay and rotting wood, and it squatted ugly under a broiling sun like a sick and mangy animal wanting to die. This village had a virus, shared by its people. It was the germ of squalor, of hopelessness, of a loss of faith. For the faithless, the hopeless, the misery-laden, there is time, ample time, to engage in one of the other pursuits of men. They begin to destroy themselves." A carnival huckster and charlatan named Sykes (Thomas Gomez) decides to make some money at a public execution in the Old West by pretending that he has some magic dust which can save a man about to be hung. In reality, it's just a bag of dirt. Or is it? Dust is one of the more forgettable Twilight Zone episodes and seems to take an age to get to what is a fairly underwhelming conclusion. The depiction of time and place is good and the actors are passable but the story is dreadfully dull and the story is simply never that interesting at all. You expect Sykes to get some sort of cosmic karma Twilight Zone comeuppance but this never happens in the end. One presumes the point of the story is that people are capable of being redeemed and seeing the error of their ways but even so this episode limps to a pretty tame resolution. Dust is arguably the dullest episode of Twilight Zone thus far in the show and not something you'll be in a rush to sit through again. As far as the Old West episodes of The Twilight Zone go this is definitely one of the weakest. The intention of the story here was to depict a town so drenched in apathy and laziness that they can't even rouse any enthusiasm to question the local justice system. While that might be an interesting idea on paper it - unfortunately - leads to a tediously languid and slow episode which, even with the modest running time, becomes something of a slog to get through in the end. Dust is well made but simply boring. C- BACK THERE (Director: David Orrick McDearmon, Writer: Rod Serling) "Witness a theoretical argument, Washington D.C., the present. Four intelligent men talking about an improbable thing like going back in time. A friendly debate revolving around a simple issue: could a human being change what has happened before? Interesting and theoretical because who ever heard of a man going back in time, before tonight, that is. Because this is the Twilight Zone." Peter Corrigan (Russell Johnson) discusses the theoretical paradoxes of time travel in his gentleman's club and when he leaves he finds himself transported to 1865. Corrigan decides to foil Lincoln's assassination but he discovers that altering the course of time and history is a lot more complex than one might think... The premise of Back There sounds like a lot of fun (in fact, it's quite similar to the enjoyable Stephen King book 11/22/63) but for some reason it never quite translates into a classic Twilight Zone episode. Back There is rife with plotholes and also commits the unpardonable sin of being rather dull at times. It's a shame really because this had the potential to be a fun little episode but it never takes off and grabs the viewer in the way it should. The cast are serviceable enough and Corrigan's obstacles in his quest to save Lincoln do at least keep you mildly engaged but you can't help feeling that a time travel story of this nature should have been a lot more memorable and a lot more watchable than Back There ever turns out to be. You wouldn't say this was an out and out clunker but it is depressingly average and never really does justice to the interesting premise. The Twilight Zone would use that familiar fantasy staple of the time travel yarn many times and this is disappointingly one of the more forgettable examples. Back There feels rather like a pale rehash of Serling's The Time Element in its general story. The Time Element was much more entertaining and intriguing than Back There ultimately manages to be. If you like time travel stories you might enjoy this more than I did but I wouldn't go in with your expectations too high. Despite the interesting premise, Back There doesn't score highly on the logic front and never really takes off. This is an episode that sounds a lot more interesting than it actually plays. C+ THE WHOLE TRUTH (Director: James Sheldon, Writer: Rod Serling) "This, as the banner already has proclaimed, is Mr Harvey Hunnicut, an expert on commerce and con jobs, a brash, bright, and larceny-loaded wheeler and dealer who, when the good lord passed out a conscience, must have gone for a beer and missed out. And these are a couple of other characters in our story: a little old man and a Model A car - but not just any old man and not just any Model A. There's something very special about the both of them. As a matter of fact, in just a few moments they'll give Harvey Hunnicut something that he's never experienced before. Through the good offices of a little magic, they will unload on Mr Hunnicut the absolute necessity to tell the truth. Exactly where they come from is conjectural, but as to where they're heading for, this we know, because all of them - and you - are on the threshold of the Twilight Zone." A shifty and dubious car salesman named Harvey Hunnicut (Jack Carson) ends up with a magical car which - for the first time in his life - makes him tell the truth. As you might imagine, this is not a great development for Harvey's profit margins... The Whole Truth is another of those cheap looking videotape episodes and pretty insufferable. This plays like a failed pilot for some 1950s dire sitcom and is one of those Twilight Zone episodes that is a chore to sit through. It is not only unfunny but absolutely tedious to boot. The script somehow manages to end up touching upon politics and the Cold War but by this point you've probably lost interest anyway. This is a rather baffling episode on the whole and one of those Twilight Zones where you wonder how it even got the green light in the first place. I suppose with so many episodes to produce they couldn't strike gold every week and a few clunkers were unavoidable. The Whole Truth is a perfect illustration of why the videotape experiment doesn't work. Videotape makes the show look like some bargain basement stagebound live drama. That rich Twilight Zone residue and atmosphere is lost when they don't shoot on film. The "object as truth serum" plot device occurred more than once in The Twilight Zone but this is by far the worst example. The Whole Truth is one for Twilight Zone completists only. This definitely wouldn't entice anyone new to the show to watch more episodes. In fact, it would probably have the opposite effect. D- THE INVADERS (Director: Douglas Heyes, Writer: Richard Matheson) "This is one of the out-of-the-way places, the unvisited places, bleak, wasted, dying. This is a farmhouse, handmade, crude, a house without electricity or gas, a house untouched by progress. This is the woman who lives in the house, a woman who's been alone for many years, a strong, simple woman whose only problem up until this moment has been that of acquiring enough food to eat, a woman about to face terror which is even now coming at her from the Twilight Zone." A mute woman (Agnes Moorhead) in a primitive and isolated farmhouse has a frightening encounter with tiny alien invaders... After three disappointing episodes on the spin, season two two thankfully finds its mojo again with The Invaders - a simple but enjoyably atmospheric and strange thriller which turns out to be a lot of fun and has a nice twist at the end. Agnes Moorhead has no dialogue in this episode but gives a convincing performance as a terrified woman who has to battle these miniature spacemen who have unexpectedly turned up at her house for reasons she can't fathom. This episode becomes very gripping and the battle between the woman and the invaders is a lot of fun. The alien invaders are basically depicted by use of what look like wind up toys and puppets. This is definitely on the hokey side (especially from a modern point of view where state of the art computer effects are commonplace in everything) and they do look ridiculous at times but the premise is so good you simply go along with it and get into the story. Besides, hokey special effects in old sci-fi are not without charm today in our headache inducing CGI festooned age. You have to love the little crackle sound of the alien ray guns in The Invaders! The little metallic spacemen are rather creepy with the tiny thud of their footsteps and the crackle of their ray guns. Director Douglas Heyes makes good use of the farmhouse and shadowy light as this enjoyably bonkers but gripping story plays out. The Invaders is a lot of fun and the simplicity of the premise turns out to be its strength. A- A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS (Director: James Sheldon, Writer: George Clayton Johnson) "Mr. Hector B Poole, resident of the Twilight Zone. Flip a coin and keep flipping it. What are the odds? Half the time it will come up heads, half the time tails. But in one freakish chance in a million, it'll land on its edge. Mr. Hector B Poole, a bright human coin, on his way to the bank." Mild mannered and put upon office worker Hector Poole (Dick York) is given the power to read minds. Will he like what he hears? A Penny For Your Thoughts is a fairly throwaway lighter episode but it's reasonably entertaining for what it is and one of the less grating comic episodes of The Twilight Zone. There's quite an interesting theme to this episode in that we see how one's thoughts are not necessarily in sync with one's actions. Hector discovers that being able to read minds might be more trouble than it is worth. It also gives him a rather jaundiced view on humanity because he discovers that those around him are secretly up to all sorts of schemes. Poole's attempts to use this power to do good backfire on him in modestly comical fashion so he begins to wonder if he shouldn't be more self serving - especially where his grumpy boss Mr Bagby (Dan Tobin) is concerned. Dick York (best known for Bewitched) is a likeable enough window through which the story is told and while this episode is probably not one that will stick in the memory for very long it does at least pass the time. The script is actually quite dense and clever in that an awful lot of incident and plot is crammed into the story without becoming confusing or jarringly clunky. A Penny For Your Thoughts is no great shakes but it is an agreeable enough time waster and likeable enough. A Penny For Your Thoughts is a lighter episode but a clever one. The humour seems less forced here because it is deftly written by George Clayton Johnson. B- TWENTY-TWO (Director: Jack Smight, Writer: Rod Serling) "This is Miss Liz Powell. She's a professional dancer and she's in the hospital as a result of overwork and nervous fatigue. And at this moment we have just finished walking with her in a nightmare. In a moment she'll wake up and we'll remain at her side. The problem here is that both Miss Powell and you will reach a point where it might be difficult to decide which is reality and which is nightmare, a problem uncommon perhaps but rather peculiar to the Twilight Zone." Liz Powell (Barbara Nichols) is a dancer suffering from exhaustion who is confined to a hospital ward. Each night she is plagued by nightmares about Room 22 - which just happens to be the morgue. In her nightmares Liz is shepherded to this room as if it is her unavoidable fate. She begins to suspect the visions are real but her doctor insists she is simply having bad dreams... This is based on The Bus-Conductor by EF Benson - which inspired a segment in the classic 1945 Ealing compendium horror film Dead of Night. Twenty-Two is a decent enough supernatural mystery that is competently made but suffers slightly from the fact we've seen this type of story in a gazillion horror anthology shows and films. The sense of dread and foreboding here is good though and in terms of atmosphere this ranks as one of the bleaker Twilight Zones - all to the strength of the story. The twist at the end is quite good too and serves as an appropriately chilling coda to this spine tingling mystery. By the way, look out for Lost in Space star Jonathan Harris. Harris is always fun in anything he turns up in. Twenty-Two never quite elevates itself into a classic Twilight Zone episode and that's probably a result of the subject matter here feeling a little on the derivative side but it is fairly engrossing and it's nice to see a more overtly horror centred episode of the show. Twenty-Two is a fair enough chiller about premonition and fate. The performances are a tad ripe but it's not bad. B- THE ODYSSEY OF FLIGHT 33 (Director: Justus Addiss, Writer: Rod Serling) "You're riding on a jet airliner en route from London to New York. You're at 35,000 feet atop an overcast and roughly fifty-five minutes from Idlewild Airport. But what you've seen occur inside the cockpit of this plane is no reflection on the aircraft or the crew. It's a safe, well-engineered, perfectly designed machine, and the men you've just met are a trained, cool, highly efficient team. The problem is simply that the plane is going too fast and there is nothing within the realm of knowledge or at least logic to explain it. Unbeknownst to passenger and crew, this airplane is heading into an uncharted region well off the beaten track of commercial travellers. It's moving into the Twilight Zone. What you're about to see we call The Odyssey of Flight 33." Trans-Ocean Airways Flight 33 is on its way from New York to London. After being buffeted by incredible and inexplicable winds the plane is thrown back in time. How are you supposed to land a plane if there are dinosaurs below?! If you've ever wondered what would happen if the aeroplane you were on was inexplicably catapulted back through time to an age of flying Pterodactyls then The Odyssey of Flight 33 will provide some of the answers you've probably never been looking for. The Odyssey of Flight 33 is justifiably regarded to be a classic episode of The Twilight Zone and is good (if somewhat silly) fun with a fantastic mystery and the solid presence of John Anderson as the pilot. It's a nice idea to have a Twilight Zone set on a plane (an idea they would of course return to in famous fashion later on in the show) and this is classic Twilight Zone in the way that the characters are thrust into a baffling and seemingly impossible mystery and must desperately try to make sense of it before it is all too late. It helps that even with a story this outlandish the cast all play it totally straight and so give the drama (as fantastical as it might be) more weight and authenticity. Look out for the enjoyably old school stop motion dinosaur in this episode. Here, the drama comes from the crew desperately running out of time and throwing their last reserves of fuel into a desperate attempt to pick up enough speed to get back to their own time. Rod Serling actually consulted his aviation engineer brother when he was writing this and therefore the technical dialogue between the crew sounds credibly authentic. The Twilight Zone returned to the time travel well many times but this is probably the most accomplished example. The dinosaur footage in this was actually lifted from the 1960 bargain basement science fiction film Dinosaurus! The Brontosaurus model was used here. The Odyssey of Flight 33 is very enjoyable on the whole and definitely one of the most memorable episodes of The Twilight Zone. The wonderful premise alone is hard to forget! It's a daft mystery but played wonderfully straight - the story always intriguing and gripping. Gratuitous trivia - the Tyrannosaurus from Dinosaurus! was used in Gilligan's Island. A- MR DINGLE, THE STRONG (Director: John Brahn, Writer: Rod Serling) "Uniquely American institution known as the neighborhood bar. Reading left to right are Mr Anthony O'Toole, proprietor who waters his drinks like geraniums but who stands foursquare for peace and quiet and for booths for ladies. This is Mr Joseph J Callahan, an unregistered bookie, whose entire life is any sporting event with two sides and a set of odds. His idea of a meeting at the summit is any dialogue between a catcher and a pitcher with more than one man on base. And this animated citizen is every anonymous bettor who ever dropped rent money on a horse race, a prize fight, or a floating crap game, and who took out his frustrations and his insolvency on any vulnerable fellow barstool companion within arm's and fist's reach. And this is Mr Luther Dingle, a vacuum-cleaner salesman whose volume of business is roughly that of a valet at a hobo convention. He's a consummate failure in almost everything but is a good listener and has a prominent jaw. And these two unseen gentlemen are visitors from outer space. They are about to alter the destiny of Luther Dingle by leaving him a legacy, the kind you can't hardly find no more. In just a moment, a sad-faced perennial punching bag who missed even the caboose of life's gravy train will take a short constitutional into that most unpredictable region that we refer to as the Twilight Zone." As an experiment, Martian scientists gives a vacuum struggling cleaner salesman named Luthor Dingle (Burgess Meredith) the strength of three hundred men. Mr Dingle soon becomes something of a celebrity... Mr. Dingle, the Strong is the black sheep of the usually excellent Burgess Meredith Twilight Zones and a pretty pointless half hour of television. This is a comic episode but not terribly funny in the least (I'd probably be repeating myself by now if I said that comic episodes were not the usually brilliant Rod Serling's greatest gift as a writer but it's probably worth repeating one more time in the case of this episode). There's not much of a twist here and the antics with Luthor showing off his powers of super strength soon become rather tiresome. He lifts statues, tears telephone books and becomes a minor celebrity. Burgess Meredith is committed and enthusiastic as ever but even he can't do much with this silly and somewhat dull story. It's a shame really because there's quite a good cast in this one with familiar faces like James Millhollin and Don Rickles popping up. Mr. Dingle, the Strong is saddled with some very hokey alien designs (in mitigation they are deliberately whimsical and silly but - even so - still terrible) and a rather underwhelming punchline. Surprisingly though the consensus on this episode doesn't seem to be as universally negative as my reaction. Some fans do seem to genuinely find this episode amusing - and that's fine because we all obviously have different tastes. If you like the more comic episodes and love Burgess Meredith (and who doesn't?) then it is possible you might get more out of this than I did. Sadly, I personally find Mr. Dingle, the Strong to be completely forgettable and quite dull in the end. D+ STATIC (Director: Buzz Kulik, Writer: Charles Beaumont) "No one ever saw one quite like that, because that's a very special sort of radio. In its day, circa 1935, its type was one of the most elegant consoles on the market. Now, with its fabric-covered speakers, its peculiar yellow dial, its serrated knobs, it looks quaint and a little strange. Mr. Ed Lindsay is going to find out how strange very soon when he tunes in to the Twilight Zone." Ed Lindsay (Dean Jagger) is a cranky old man who shares a boarding house with other senior citizens. Ed finds an old radio in the basement which seems to tune into shows from a bygone era. This magical radio rekindles memories of his younger years and the days when he was engaged to Vinnie Broun (Carmen Matthews) - who also lives in the boarding house. Is it too late for Ed to have a second chance at happiness? Static is another of the videotape episodes but for some reason this is less of a problem here than the others shot on video. Maybe it's because the setting is simple and the story is likeable enough. This show did several stories about old folks who take an excursion in the Twilight Zone and most of them were agreeable enough. Static is no exception and is a bittersweet little yarn that passes the time and is quite moving at its best. One interesting thing about this episode is that it's a sort of tribute to the golden age of radio. By the early sixties television had overtaken radio as the main medium of entertainment and so - already - radio was starting to be slightly seen as a bygone sort of thing. Static is another Twilight Zone episode which mines a theme that is recurring in the show - the desire to turn back the clock and escape from the circumstances of one's present situation. Static is no classic but it's fine for what it is and one of the better of the several episodes shot on videotape. B- THE PRIME MOVER (Director: Richard L Bare, Writer: Charles Beaumont) "Portrait of a man who thinks and thereby gets things done. Mr. Jimbo Cobb might be called a prime mover, a talent which has to be seen to be believed. In just a moment, he'll show his friends and you how he keeps both feet on the ground and his head in the Twilight Zone." Ace Larsen (Dane Clark) and Jimbo (Buddy Ebsen) are friends who work in a cafe. Ace realises that Jimbo has psychokinetic abilities and insists they head to Las Vegas to clean up at the casinos. Jimbo is not terribly comfortable with this plan though and begins to tire of using his powers simply for the pursuit of money... The Prime Mover is another of those middling middle ranking sort of Twilight Zones episodes. It's fairly entertaining but one wouldn't place it near the Twilight Zone top table. The contrast between the two lead actors is good though and gives this most of its juice. Ace is confident and brash while Jimbo is more laid-back and shy. There's an obvious message here about how money and the pursuit of money is not the be all and end all of life. It's really the arc of Ace that drives this story. He must come to realise that the simple things (like love and friendship) are what make life worth living - not wealth and greed. It's quite good fun to have another casino story in The Twilight Zone and The Prime Mover passes the time well enough. The ending is reasonably satisfying and this is generally a pleasant experience if not something that will stay lodged in the memory very long in the way that the top tier Twilight Zone episodes tend to do. The Prime Mover is decent enough but never much more than that. It's certainly an episode that is worth watching though. B- LONG DISTANCE CALL (Director: James Sheldon, Writer: Charles Beaumont) "As must be obvious, this is a house hovered over by Mr Death, that omnipresent player to the third and final act of every life. And it's been said, and probably rightfully so, that what follows this life is one of the unfathomable mysteries, an area of darkness which we the living reserve for the dead - or so it is said. For in a moment, a child will try to cross that bridge which separates light and shadow, and of course he must take the only known route, that indistinct highway through the region we call the Twilight Zone." Five year-old Billy (Billy Mumy) is very close to his grandmother Grandma Bayles (Lili Darvas). Grandma Bayles gives Billy a toy plastic telephone on his birthday but when she dies Billy claims he can still speak to his grandmother on the toy phone... Long Distance Call is probably the best of Twilight Zone's videotape episodes and a pretty dark sort of story. It's very creepy when Billy claims he is talking to his deceased grandmother on the toy phone and things get even darker when Billy begins to try and injure himself - as if someone wants him to join them in the great beyond. The story has a nice supernatural element and is essentially about grandma learning to let go of Billy so he can get on with his life. While dark it does have an uplifting sort of quality by the time of its conclusion. Child actor Billy Mumy is decent enough here as the troubled boy and this, as we shall see, would not be his last contribution to The Twilight Zone. His next episode would one of the most memorable in the history of the show. It's a slight shame that Long Distance Call wasn't shot on film because these videotape episodes always seem slightly weird and 'off' visually but - generally - this is a pretty solid episode and good for what it is. This is a pretty dark episode but works as a ghost story and has a satisfying resolution. It was apparently subject to a last minute rewrite by Serling (who visited the set and didn't like the dialogue at the end). These changes appear to have been successful. B A HUNDRED YARDS OVER THE RIM (Director: Buzz Kulick, Writer: Rod Serling) "The year is 1847, the place is the territory of New Mexico, the people are a tiny handful of men and women with a dream. Eleven months ago, they started out from Ohio and headed west. Someone told them about a place called California, about a warm sun and a blue sky, about rich land and fresh air, and at this moment almost a year later they've seen nothing but cold, heat, exhaustion, hunger, and sickness. This man's name is Christian Horn. He has a dying eight year-old son and a heartsick wife, and he's the only one remaining who has even a fragment of the dream left. Mr Chris Horn, who's going over the top of a rim to look for water and sustenance and in a moment will move into the Twilight Zone." Christian Horn (Cliff Robertson) is part of a wagon train on the way to California in 1847. There's a problem though because his son has fallen ill and in desperate need of medicine and water. Horn breaks off from the group to look for a town and clambers over a rim. The sight that greets him is perplexing and astonishing. Modern telegraph poles, a highway with trucks, and a 1961 diner. It appears that Horn has emerged one hundred years into the future... A Hundred Yards Over the Rim is a wonderful Twilight Zone episode which perfectly illustrates how the simplest stories can often be the best ones. Cliff Robertson, in his first trip to the Twilight Zone, is excellent and authentic as Horn and the sense of time and place is very believable in the intro to this story. Things of course take a fantastical turn when Horn is somehow catapulted into the future but all the same this is a rewarding low-key sort of Twilight Zone episode rather than one where all sorts of crazy things happen. The story here is clever and perfectly satisfying in the way it resolves itself and A Hundred Yards Over the Rim is a very deft blend of drama and fantasy that works all the better for being played perfectly straight. Look out for John Astin in this episode too and John Crawford and Evans Evans (no typo - that's her name!) offer nice support as the diner owners the perplexed Horn encounters. A Hundred Yards Over the Rim is an excellent Twilight Zone entry and a very satisfying little drama. Although not an awful lot happens in the story it wraps up in a clever and satisfying way and is an interesting and absorbing fish out of water tale with a big dose of fantasy and science fiction. Wonderful performance by Robertson as the perplexed Horn. A- THE RIP VAN WINKLE CAPER (Director: Justus Addiss, Writer: Rod Serling) "Introducing four experts in the questionable art of crime. Mr Farwell, expert on noxious gases, former professor with a doctorate in both chemistry and physics. Mr Erbie, expert on mechanical engineering. Mr Brooks, expect in the use of firearms and other weaponry. And Mr DeCruz, expert in demolition and various forms of destruction. The time is now and the place is a mountain cave in Death Valley, USA. In just a moment, these four men will utilize the services of a truck placed in cosmoline, loaded with a hot heist cooled off by a century of sleep, and then take a drive into the Twilight Zone." A gang of thieves led by Professor Farwell (Oscar Beregi, Jr) steal $1 million in gold bullion. Farwell, who fancies himself as a criminal genius, has come up with he thinks is a brilliant plan. They will go into suspended animation in stasis pods (located in an old cave so they aren't disturbed) for one hundred years and then awaken one hundred years in the future. Farwell figures that one hundred years from now their crime will be forgotten and they will be presumed dead so no one will be looking for them anymore. And that gold is sure to be worth even more in the future isn't it? What can possibly go wrong with this masterful plan? Well, this being the Twilight Zone, quite a lot as it turns out... They say there is no honour among thieves and that's definitely the case with the characters in The Rip Van Winkle Caper. Once they awaken they soon begin to bicker and turn on one another and it ends up as a bad tempered battle of wits between Farwell and DeCruz (Simon Oakland) as they haul their gold across a long desert road. The Rip Van Winkle Caper is a lot of fun and a very enjoyable half hour of television. It's fun right from the start when the characters must enter the stasis pods in the cave (wonder if this what gave Serling the idea for the stasis pods at the start of The Planet of the Apes?). So what you essentially get here is an entertaining crime caper with some sci-fi trappings. Oscar Beregi, Jr is entertainingly pompous as Farwell - a man who, as we shall find out - is not quite as clever as he had assumed. Beregi plays Farwell like a low-level Bond villain and his presence elevates this crime caper and makes it even more enjoyable. Simon Oakland is good too although his role is slightly more constrictive in that's basically there to provide friction and give Farwell a hard time. The Rip Van Winkle Caper is a very enjoyable episode and has a very satisfying and classically Twilight Zone-ish twist at the end. The twist here is deliciously ironic. B+ THE SILENCE (Director: Boris Sagal, Writer: Rod Serling) "The note that this man is carrying across a club room is in the form of a proposed wager, but it's the kind of wager that comes without precedent. It stands alone in the annals of bet-making as the strangest game of chance ever offered by one man to another. In just a moment, we'll see the terms of the wager and what young Mr. Tennyson does about it. And in the process, we'll witness all parties spin a wheel of chance in a very bizarre casino called the Twilight Zone." At a swanky gentleman's club, snobby Colonel Archie Taylor (Franchot Tone) is increasingly annoyed by the chatty and popular young Jamie Tennyson (Liam Sullivan). Taylor proposes a wager to Tennyson. He will give him one million dollars on one condition. Tennyson simply has to stay silent and not speak for one year... The Silence has a great premise and although it strains credibility (would anyone really agree to give up a year of their life in this way?) it does make for a gripping and absorbing episode. Tennyson has financial trouble - which I suppose explains why he agrees to the wager - and is also eager to take Taylor to the cleaners. Tennyson is then placed in a room where he can be recorded and monitored for one year just to make he adheres to the stipulation that he not speak. One of the most enjoyable aspects to the story here is the way that the urbane Taylor becomes increasingly rattled and concerned when Tennyson lasts much longer in this strange wager than he had expected. The battle of will between the two main characters is what drives the story and makes it interesting. Will Tennyson claim that million dollars? Well, you'll just have to find out for yourself. The Silence is a very interesting episode in that it has no magical or fantastical elements but still feels like it has a lot Twilight Zone DNA and residue. This is definitely a very watchable and above average episode. There's a very good twist at the end too. You probably wouldn't quite put The Silence at the Twilight Zone top table but it is a very good little episode though. It's a good episode with a macabre twist in the tale. Superb performances from Franchot Tone and Liam Sullivan. The central idea behind The Silence is a clever and intriguing one. Could you stay silent for a whole year if a million dollars was at stake? B+ SHADOW PLAY (Director: John Brahm, Writer: Charles Beaumont) "Adam Grant, a nondescript kind of man found guilty of murder and sentenced to the electric chair. Like every other criminal caught in the wheels of justice he's scared, right down to the marrow of his bones. But it isn't prison that scares him, the long, silent nights of waiting, the slow walk to the little room, or even death itself. It's something else that holds Adam Grant in the hot, sweaty grip of fear, something worse than any punishment this world has to offer, something found only in the Twilight Zone." Adam Grant (Dennis Weaver) is on Death Row in prison and nearing his execution. However, he feels as if he has been in this situation many times before as if trapped in some repeating time loop. Is this real or simply a vivid nightmare? Shadow Play is a solid episode powered by a committed performance by Dennis Weaver as the incarcerated man apparently trapped in a terrible nightmare. The dreamlike atmosphere of the story is put across on the screen and there are many surreal flourishes that pay off the observant viewer - like the supporting cast frequently switching characters as if they are all in a nightmarish play being performed in Grant's imagination. Shadow Play is wonderfully paranoid and sustained. This is quite a clever Twilight Zone and those paying attention closely will get some rewarding pay-offs as the story progresses. This is sort of Kafka meets Groundhog Day meets The Twilight Zone and it all rattles along at a good pace and holds one's attention throughout. The supporting cast are fine and Shadow Play builds to a fairly satisfying third act. This episode (happily) continues what has been a strong batch of final stories for season two of The Twilight Zone. This is a suspenseful, complex and gripping episode that explores the shadow realm of the nightmare. Imagine if you had a nightmare you couldn't escape from that seemed to be stuck on a constant loop. It's a good episode about the nature of reality. B+ THE MIND AND THE MATTER (Director: John Brahm, Writer: Charles Beaumont) "A brief if frenetic introduction to Mr Archibald Beechcroft, a child of the twentieth century, a product of the population explosion, and one of the inheritors of the legacy of progress. Mr Beechcroft again. This time act two of his daily battle for survival. And in just a moment, our hero will begin his personal one-man rebellion against the mechanics of his age, and to do so he will enlist certain aids available only in the Twilight Zone." Office worker Archibald Beechcroft (Shelly Berman) is fed-up with fighting his way to work through crowds of people and equally annoyed by his co-workers in his overcrowded place of employment. After acquiring a book about mental powers, Beechcroft discovers he can make something happen merely by thinking about it. Why not make other people disappear? The world be nicer and quieter without other people wouldn't it? The Mind And The Matter has quite an interesting premise (most of us have had a fantasy about having the world to ourself for a day!) but the arc of Beechcroft is rather predictable in that we just know he'll end up learning that people make the world what it is and you'd rather have them around than not. The main problem with this episode is that it's one of those jaunty comical episodes so everything in the story has less weight or consequence than it would have done with a straight drama or mystery. The Mind And The Matter is never terribly funny either although it is quite inventive when Beechcroft encounters multiple versions of himself. The world created here where everyone looks like Shelly Berman seems to rather anticipate the film Being John Malkovich! You wouldn't say that The Mind And The Matter is boring but it is fairly forgettable and feels like the show treading water - especially in comparison to the strong and ambitious episodes that preceded it in the previous weeks. Shelly Berman, by the way, was much later Larry David's dad in Curb Your Enthusiasm. He's ok in this but it's hardly a classic episode of the show. C+ WILL THE REAL MARTIAN PLEASE STAND UP? (Director: Montgomery Pittman, Writer: Rod Serling) "Wintry February night, the present. Order of events: a phone call from a frightened woman notating the arrival of an unidentified flying object, then the check-out you've just witnessed with two state troopers verifying the event, but with nothing more enlightening to add beyond evidence of some tracks leading across the highway to a diner. You've heard of trying to find a needle in a haystack? Well, stay with us now and you'll be part of an investigating team whose mission is not to find that proverbial needle. No, their task is even harder. They've got to find a Martian in a diner, and in just a moment you'll search with them, because you've just landed in the Twilight Zone." A small group of bus passengers take refuge in a diner during a snow blizzard. However, there is evidence that a UFO crashed nearby and footprints from the site lead straight to the diner. Two police officers must go to the diner and see if they can deduce which person is the imposter... Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up? is a brilliant Twilight Zone episode with oodles of atmosphere and a fantastic premise. The brilliant thing about this episode is that it is broadly what you could describe as a comic episode and yet the mystery is not diluted in the least by the humour. There is a perfect blend between levity and mystery here that makes it Serling's best ever comic script. Much of the credit for this must go to Jack Elam as an eccentric man in the diner who seems to find the entire situation amusing. Elam is very funny in Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up? The viewer has to play detective in this episode and try and deduce who the alien imposter might be. The answer to that question supplies a terrific double twist at the end. The cast here is great - especially John Hoyt as the suspicious businessman Hoyt. What's really great about Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up? is that it has a perfect setting for a Twilight Zone story in that these characters are trapped in a constrictive location where strange things are abounding. The diner jukebox keeps coming on and off and the lights suddenly seem to have a life of their own. Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up? is definitely one of the great Twilight Zone episodes and tremendous fun from start to finish. A THE OBSOLETE MAN (Director: Elliot Silverstein, Writer: Rod Serling) "You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the superstates that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. This is Mr Romney Wordsworth, in his last forty-eight hours on Earth. He's a citizen of the State but will soon have to be eliminated, because he is built out of flesh and because he has a mind. Mr Romney Wordsworth, who will draw his last breaths in the Twilight Zone." In a future totalitarian state, librarian Romney Wordsworth (Burgess Meredith) is declared 'obsolete' and sentenced to execution for the high crimes of reading books and having religious beliefs. Wordsworth doesn't intend to go quietly though and comes up with a cunning plan to discredit the state prosecutor (Fritz Weaver)... The Obsolete Man is dramatically a bit pompous and dramatically obvious and one-sided but Burgess Meredith and Fritz Weaver are terrific as the two diametrically opposed foes and the sparse design of this episode is (when one considers the budgetary constraints that Twilight Zone operated under) very stylish and inventive in conveying this fascist future society. While there isn't much nuance to Serling's script and he's somewhat heavy handed it is nonetheless very satisfying to see Wordsworth turn the tables on Fritz Weaver and give the "Chancellor" a taste of his own medicine. This is the sort of story that would definitely have outstayed its welcome if stretched out over an hour but it works well in this shorter 'classic' Twilight Zone format and is a relatively engrossing yarn from start to finish. The last act is quite clever and supplies some nice Twilight Zone style cosmic karma. Serling's tendency to occasionally gives actors overwritten monologues is sometimes in evidence here but one forgives Serling wearing his heart on his sleeve and the two lead actors are good enough to handle dialogue that might have sounded clunky in lesser hands (or mouths if you prefer). The Obsolete Man is an agreeably solid end to season two and pretty good on the whole. This is a solid mediation on the dangers of conformity and features a touching performance by Meredith. B+ The Third Season 1961/62 TWO (Director: Montgomery Pittman, Writer: Montgomery Pittman) "This is a jungle, a monument built by nature honoring disuse, commemorating a few years of nature being left to its own devices. But it's another kind of jungle, the kind that comes in the aftermath of man's battles against himself. Hardly an important battle, not a Gettysburg or a Marne or an Iwo Jima. More like one insignificant corner patch in the crazy quilt of combat. But it was enough to end the existence of this little city. It's been five years since a human being walked these streets. This is the first day of the sixth year, as man used to measure time. The time? Perhaps a hundred years from now. Or sooner. Or perhaps it's already happened two million years ago. The place? The signposts are in English so that we may read them more easily, but the place is the Twilight Zone." In the ruined aftermath of what appears to be World War III, two enemy soldiers (played by Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery respectively) encounter one another in a deserted and abandoned town. She is still ready to fight but he has had enough of war... Two is a very interesting and quite compelling opening episode for series three. A deserted Hal Roach backlot makes for a believable (and at times surprisingly grim) post-apocalyptic setting and the two stars are superb in what is almost a silent production. Montgomery is suggested to be Russian and more impulsive and distrustful while Bronson's American soldier is tired of war and killing and willing to trust someone just to make a human connection. Not an awful lot happens in Two but the little moments as the two combatants begin to form a bond of trust and peace are rewarding and quietly moving and this works well enough as an anti-war episode (happily, Two never comes across as preachy or heavy-handed). This is an unusual episode that is difficult to describe but it lulls you in with its rich and desperate aura of sadness. These two characters are weary of fighting and destruction. They just want to be normal people again in a normal world. You wouldn't say that TWO is ever quite elevated into a classic Twilight Zone episode but it's very good for what it is and a fairly rewarding start to the third season. B The story is gritty and realistic (skeletal remains of humans and animals) and strong on character. The beautiful Elizabeth Montgomery would later become a big star in the sitcom Bewitched but here she is completely different. Smudged in mud with long brown hair, looking tired and rustic. She's great - as is Bronson as the decent American soldier. His strong but silent screen image is a perfect fit. The twist is that Bronson is the pacifist and has to cope with the impulsive nature of the more violent and moody Russian soldier who he merely wants to be friends with. B THE ARRIVAL (Director: Boris Sagal, Writer: Rod Serling) "This object, should any of you have lived underground for the better parts of your lives and never had occasion to look toward the sky, is an airplane, its official designation a DC-3. We offer this rather obvious comment because this particular airplane, the one you're looking at, is a freak. Now, most airplanes take off and land as per scheduled. On rare occasions they crash. But all airplanes can be counted on doing one or the other. Now, yesterday morning this particular airplane ceased to be just a commercial carrier. As of its arrival it became an enigma, a seven-ton puzzle made out of aluminium, steel, wire and a few thousand other component parts, none of which add up to the right thing. In just a moment, we're going to show you the tail end of its history. We're going to give you ninety percent of the jigsaw pieces and you and Mr Sheckly here of the Federal Aviation Agency will assume the problem of putting them together along with finding the missing pieces. This we offer as an evening's hobby, a little extracurricular diversion which is really the national pastime in the Twilight Zone." Grant Sheckly (Harold J Stone) is a brilliant aviation FAA investigator who has never failed to get to the bottom of a plane crash or incident. However, he now faces his greatest challenge because Flight 107 has just successfully landed an an airport with no passengers or crew onboard. The plane is completely empty! How on earth did it manage to land then? A puzzled Sheckly is now facing a mystery to rival the Mary Celeste... The Arrival is disappointing in the way that it presents us with a fantastic mystery but then never quite works out what to do for the ending and the explanation for said mystery. The explanation feels underwhelming to say the least - almost as if Rod Serling had no idea how to explain the wonderful mystery we are presented with at the beginning of the story. It's a shame really because this story promises so much in its early scenes and does have some genuine moments of tension along the way. The Arrival grabs our attention but then never quite takes advantage of that by rewarding us with a memorable third act. It's fun though to see the ultra confident and usually peerless Sheckly become increasingly frazzled by the puzzling events. What really negates The Arrival as much as anything is the fact that when one looks back at the story after the conclusion the plotholes and things that don't make any sense suddenly become very apparent. This story certainly had a lot of potential but the end result is rather disappointing. The solution to everything feels like a cop out and The Arrival always seems somewhat flat and derivative of several (better) Twilight Zone episodes like King Nine Will Not Return. Stone is decent enough in the lead but Noah Keen and Fredd Wayne as supporting characters are required to supply just a little too much commentary and exposition. The Arrival never really makes any sense and proves to be underwhelming in the end after a good start. B- THE SHELTER (Director: Lamont Johnson, Writer: Rod Serling) "What you are about to watch is a nightmare. It is not meant to be prophetic, it need not happen, it's the fervent and urgent prayer of all men of good will that it never shall happen. But in this place, in this moment, it does happen. This is the Twilight Zone." A group of friends are having a party to celebrate the birthday of Dr Bill Stockton (Larry Gates). These people are well-heeled and seemingly urbane and gentle. However, things change when a radio report suggests that a nuclear strike on the United States is imminent. It turns out that Dr Stockton is the only person in the street with his own nuclear bunker. Stockton insists he only has room and provisions for three people in his shelter - his wife (Peggy Stewart) and young son. His friends refuse to take no for an answer though and soon descend into panic and violence as they seek to force their way into Stockton's nuclear shelter... The Shelter is quite a famous episode of The Twilight Zone but it sometimes tends to be dismissed as something of a clunker - or a missed opportunity at the very least. The main reason for this is that Serling is generally felt to have hammered home his point here in too obvious a fashion. The thesis of the episode is that civilisation is a precarious and fragile thing. It wouldn't take much to make people revert to more primal instincts and turn on one another. The argument against The Shelter is we are already aware of this concept. We all know that human beings have the capacity to be selfish and violent. That said though The Shelter is at least quite gripping and it's fun to have a genuine element of nuclear paranoia in the show. At the time this episode was made the end of the Cold War was nowhere in sight and people had a very real fear of a World War III fought with atomic weapons. The actions of the characters in The Shelter do rather strain credibility at times but the episode is never boring and the juxtaposition of these people enjoying a genteel and happy birthday at the start to then descending into madness as they bicker and fight over the shelter is certainly stark and often compelling. The acting is good (look out for Jack Albertson who played Charlie's Grandfather in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) and the story is always relatively gripping. This is sort of a companion piece to The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street. Very similar. Quiet suburbia transformed into an angry mob by mass collective fear, prejudice and panic. It's not as good as that episode though. The Shelter probably would have been insufferable in the end as an hour long episode but it works fairly well in the half hour format and the premise of the episode is compellingly dark. The Shelter definitely isn't perfect but it is worth watching and nowhere near as bad as it is sometimes portrayed to be. B THE PASSERBY (Director: Elliot Silverstein, Writer: Rod Serling) "This road is the afterwards of the Civil War. It began at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and ended at a place called Appomattox. It's littered with the residue of broken battles and shattered dreams. In just a moment, you will enter a strange province that knows neither North nor South, a place we call the Twilight Zone." As the Civil War rages on, Lavinia Godwin (Joanne Linville) resides in a ruined mansion and awaits news of her soldier husband. Confederate soldiers, injured and weary, trudge past as she waits... The Passerby is a rather slow and odd episode. A folk song called Black Is The Color (Of My True Love's Hair) is used within the story and there's a fine dreamlike atmosphere as the soldiers trudge past the old house. Joanne Linville is pretty good as Lavinia and the design of the episode is quite impressive considering the constrictive budget Twilight Zone operated under. Here's the problem though. The rich atmosphere of The Passerby only goes so far. With hardly any story or plot to speak of and a twist that you will literally see coming from a mile off, The Passerby never builds on the foundations of its atmosphere and production to do anything especially surprising or interesting at all. As a consequence of this, despite the inventive flourishes and impressive off-kilter ambience of the piece, The Passerby feels like a filler episode that is treading water. One could probably forgive any viewer who ultimately found The Passerby rather dull in the end. This is not an episode that stays in the memory for very long or will feature too prominently in your list of episodes to rewatch. The Passerby is more of a mood piece than anything and your enjoyment will probably rest on how much you fall for the atmosphere. If you go in with lowish expectations you might enjoy this but it seems doubtful that The Passerby will be everyone's cup of tea. B- A GAME OF POOL (Director: Buzz Kulik, Writer: George Clayton Johnson) "Jesse Cardiff, pool shark, the best on Randolph Street, who will soon learn that trying to be the best at anything carries its own special risks in or out of the Twilight Zone." Chicago pool hustler Jesse Cardiff (Jack Klugman) thinks he is the best and laments the fact that he never got a chance to prove this against the late pool ace Fats Brown (Jonathan Winters). As this is the Twilight Zone, Jesse's wish is granted and Fats magically appears to meet his challenge. The two men play a game of pool with high stakes indeed. If Jesse wins he will be regarded as the greatest ever. If he loses it will cost him his life... Jack Klugman makes a welcome return to the show here and delivers another terrific performance. An episode where two people play pool doesn't sound tremendously exciting or interesting on the face of it but A Game of Pool is actually very absorbing and gripping and of course greatly enhanced by the good chemistry between Klugman and Jonathan Winters. The twist is satisfying and the episode is well directed with plenty of atmosphere and tension. Fats is a great character because we see that he's very weary of his reputation and status. Getting to the top of a sport or profession is one thing but staying at the top is even more challenging and exhausting. There's always some new contender eager for a shot at the champ. The real test is not in becoming the best but remaining there when everyone wants to knock you off your perch. How do you cope with the expectation and pressure? Jesse will experience some of this ennui for himself by the conclusion of the story. There's a rich supernatural atmosphere in this story that is very vivid and makes a nice spectral backdrop to the drama. A Game of Pool is a strong Twilight Zone episode on the whole and definitely worth watching. A Game of Pool works because it isn't whimsical or light hearted as you might expect. It goes for realism rather than sentimentality. A nice meditation on the ramifications of winning and losing and being the best. A- THE MIRROR (Director: Don Medford, Writer: Rod Serling) "This is the face of Ramos Clemente, a year ago a beardless, nameless worker of the dirt who plodded behind a mule, furrowing someone else's land. And he looked up at a hot Central American sun and he pledged the impossible. He made a vow that he would lead an avenging army against the tyranny that put the ache in his back and the anguish in his eyes, and now one year later the dream of the impossible has become a fact. In just a moment we will look deep into this mirror and see the aftermath of a rebellion in the Twilight Zone." A dictator named Ramos Clemente (Peter Falk) in Central America is told that a mirror will reveal the faces of those out to betray and kill him. Ramos becomes increasingly paranoid and frazzled as he attempts to cling onto power... The great Peter Falk in a Twilight Zone! It's surely too good to be true isn't it? Well, sadly, yes, it is. The Mirror must be a candidate for the worst episode of The Twilight Zone ever made. Falk, in a preposterous fake beard, seems to be patterned on Castro and gives an eccentric performance in this tedious drama. One of the problems with this episode is that it - whatever the intentions - comes across as Serling having a pop at Castro and Cuba and presenting a one-sided story with no nuance at all. Maybe it might have been better if Ramos was a more generic character because there are always plenty of heartless dictators and regimes in the world much worse than Castro. To make Ramos so obviously a proxy for Castro seems odd. The biggest cardinal sin of The Mirror though is to simply be dull. This episode, even at half an hour, is a real slog to get through. The setting, costumes, and accents are all hokey and unbelievable and everyone will guess the twist long before we get there. The Mirror is pretty awful on the whole. This is pure filler and hardly worth your time. It's a great shame indeed that they couldn't have found a better episode for Peter Falk to feature in. Serling's script here is Cold War heavy and merely reinforces the prejudices of the American public at the time (strange because Serling was usually a very liberal and enlightened writer). They obviously thought that Castro was some madman and murderer and the simplistic depiction of him is very superficial. Falk raves and struts to no great effect and is thoroughly wasted. D- THE GRAVE (Director: Montgomery Pittman, Writer: Montgomery Pittman) "Normally, the old man would be correct. This would be the end of the story. We've had the traditional shoot-out on the street and the badman will soon be dead. But some men of legend and folk tale have been known to continue having their way even after death. The outlaw and killer Pinto Sykes was such a person, and shortly we'll see how he introduces the town and a man named Conny Miller, in particular, to the Twilight Zone." In the Old West, bounty hunter Conny Miller (Lee Marvin) is mocked for his failure to capture outlaw Pinto Sykes - despite trailing him for a considerable time. Miller is annoyed that folks think he was scared of Pinto and deliberately chose not to confront him. Turns out that Pinto is dead now anyway. Pinto's last words were that if Miller ever visited his grave he would reach up and grab him. Miller is offered a wager by the men in the saloon. All he has to do is visit Pinto's grave at midnight and stick a knife in the burial mound to prove he was there... The Grave is one of the better western themed Twilight Zones and a good solid ghost story (though ambiguity is used to good effect). Lee Marvin is terrific as Miller and is a well-rounded character in that he isn't Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western but a very human character who is flawed and not immune to fear and doubt. The depiction of time and place is good here and I like the fact that this story seems to take place on a cold and windy night. This not a romantic depiction of the Old West and feels all the more authentic because of that. It's great too to see Lee Van Cleef and James Best in the supporting cast. There is a great group of actors in this one. The challenge faced by Miller, that of visiting Pinto's grave at midnight, becomes very gripping and is fantastically atmospheric. The Grave is a little on the slow side at first but it gradually draws you into the premise and becomes more compelling as it goes on. While you wouldn't say this was an out and out classic The Grave is very solid and effective and does what it sets out to do very well. Despite the restrictive nature of the sets the western atmosphere well conveyed by the props men and the cast and the central task of Marvin's character gives The Grave is a good ghostly aura. This is a pretty good episode on the whole. A strength here is the source material by Montgomery Pittman. Pittman was excellent at detail and language, how people spoke in certain places and periods. B IT'S A GOOD LIFE (Director: James Shelby, Writer: Rod Serling) "Tonight's story on The Twilight Zone is somewhat unique and calls for a different kind of introduction. This, as you may recognize, is a map of the United States, and there's a little town there called Peaksville. On a given morning not too long ago, the rest of the world disappeared and Peaksville was left all alone. Its inhabitants were never sure whether the world was destroyed and only Peaksville left untouched or whether the village had somehow been taken away. They were, on the other hand, sure of one thing: the cause. A monster had arrived in the village. Just by using his mind, he took away the automobiles, the electricity, the machines - because they displeased him - and he moved an entire community back into the dark ages - just by using his mind. Now I'd like to introduce you to some of the people in Peaksville, Ohio. This is Mr Fremont. It's in his farmhouse that the monster resides. This is Mrs Fremont. And this is Aunt Amy, who probably had more control over the monster in the beginning than almost anyone. But one day she forgot. She began to sing aloud. Now, the monster doesn't like singing, so his mind snapped at her, turned her into the smiling, vacant thing you're looking at now. She sings no more. And you'll note that the people in Peaksville, Ohio, have to smile. They have to think happy thoughts and say happy things because once displeased, the monster can wish them into a cornfield or change them into a grotesque, walking horror. This particular monster can read minds, you see. He knows every thought, he can feel every emotion. Oh yes, I did forget something, didn't I? I forgot to introduce you to the monster. This is the monster. His name is Anthony Fremont. He's six years old, with a cute little-boy face and blue, guileless eyes. But when those eyes look at you, you'd better start thinking happy thoughts, because the mind behind them is absolutely in charge. This is the Twilight Zone." In the small town of Peaksville, everyone is terrified of six-year Anthony Fremont (Bill Mumy). Anthony has godlike powers and can do anything he wants simply by thinking about it. Not only that but he can read minds. Anyone who has an unhappy thought about him is liable to be turned into a jack-in-the-box and banished to the cornfield. Anthony has separated Peaksville from the world and blocked out television signals and electricity. No one is allowed to sing or listen to music because it displeases him. Everyone - even his parents - are scared to death of Anthony and must do everything he says for fear of punishment. Will the unhappy and captive population of Peaksville have the courage to act against Anthony and end this nightmare? It's A Good Life (adapted from a story by Jerome Bixby) has a truly chilling premise that it uses to strong effect in one of the most famous Twilight Zone episodes. Imagine being at the mercy of a stroppy small boy who can turn you into an indescribable horror simply by thinking about it! Even when Anthony begins destroying precious dwindling crops by making it snow no one can tell him what he is doing is wrong for fear of provoking his anger. They must simply say - "That's a good thing you did Anthony! A good thing!" This line is laced with a subtext of desperation and hysteria that is truly terrifying. The real tension comes here when Dan Hollis (Don keefer) gets drunk at his birthday on one of the few remaining bottles of alcohol left in the village and in his drunken state begins to complain about Anthony and tell him what he really thinks. We JUST know that poor old Dan is going to meet a horrible fate for his honesty. It's very tense too when Dan implores someone to do something - and by that he obviously means kill Anthony. But will anyone be brave enough to try? Failure will result in a dreadful retribution from the godlike boy. Anthony's mind-reading powers really increase the tension of the story. Don't think bad thoughts about him! It's A Good Life is enjoyably bleak and as scary as any Twilight Zone episode. This is really great stuff and justifies its reputation as one of the best known episodes in the history of the show. A DEATHS-HEAD REVISITED (Director: Don Medford, Writer: Rod Serling) "Mr Schmidt, recently arrived in a small Bavarian village which lies eight miles northwest of Munich, a picturesque, delightful little spot onetime known for its scenery but more recently related to other events having to do with some of the less positive pursuits of man: human slaughter, torture, misery and anguish. Mr Schmidt, as we will soon perceive, has a vested interest in the ruins of a concentration camp - for once, some seventeen years ago, his name was Gunther Lutze. He held the rank of a captain in the S.S. He was a black-uniformed strutting animal whose function in life was to give pain, and like his colleagues of the time he shared the one affliction most common amongst that breed known as Nazis: he walked the Earth without a heart. And now former S.S. Captain Lutze will revisit his old haunts, satisfied perhaps that all that is awaiting him in the ruins on the hill is an element of nostalgia. What he does not know, of course, is that a place like Dachau cannot exist only in Bavaria. By its nature, by its very nature, it must be one of the populated areas of the Twilight Zone." "Mr Schimdt" (Oscar Beregi) arrives in a Bavarian village for a short stay. In reality, he is a former sadistic SS member named Captain Lutze who was notorious for his cruelty at Dachau concentration camp. Lutze takes a trip to the abandoned concentration camp and is nostalgic for the terrible power and authority he wielded there during the war. A man named Becker (Joseph Schildkraut) appears at the camp and Lutze assumes he must be a caretaker. However, Becker is a former inmate of Dachau and is about to dispense some long overdue cosmic Twilight Zone karma for the indescribably evil crimes that Lutze committed... Although Deaths-Head Revisited occasionally feels almost too important a subject for The Twilight Zone and is (unavoidably) rather grim at times, it works thanks to several mitigating factors. Serling's wraparound narrations are amongst his most poignant and heartfelt and Oscar Beregi is strong as the (at first) gleeful Nazi, nostalgic for the war and its attendant cruelty, wistfully remembering the time when a uniform gave him a great sense of power and importance. He's matched by Joseph Schildkraut as a former inmate named Becker who magically appears at Dachau to see that justice is done. The set (which was a town set built for a western pilot) used for Deaths-Head Revisited is appropriately abandoned with a decent sense of scale and the dreamlike atmosphere forged by Don Medford is effective. The karma here is very satisfying. Afterall, if a Nazi war criminal doesn't deserve a nightmarish trip to the Twilight Zone then who does? This episode could have come across as insensitive if handled incorrectly but it is beautifully directed, written, and performed and manages to avoid ever feel like something that borders on exploitation or bad taste. Deaths-Head Revisited, as it should be, is sensitive and sober and very moving. This was a brave idea for a Twilight Zone episode that come easily have come unstuck in lesser hands but thankfully it avoids the pitfalls that come with such a serious and weighty subject and becomes a very thoughtful and satisfying half hour of television. Serling's impassioned closing narration is rather moving. A- THE MIDNIGHT SUN (Director: Anton Leader, Writer: Rod Serling) "The word that Mrs Bronson is unable to put into the hot, still, sodden air is 'doomed,' because the people you've just seen have been handed a death sentence. One month ago, the Earth suddenly changed its elliptical orbit and in doing so began to follow a path which gradually, moment by moment, day by day, took it closer to the sun. And all of man's little devices to stir up the air are now no longer luxuries - they happen to be pitiful and panicky keys to survival. The time is five minutes to twelve, midnight. There is no more darkness. The place is New York City and this is the eve of the end, because even at midnight it's high noon, the hottest day in history, and you're about to spend it in the Twilight Zone." The Earth has deviated from its usual elliptical pathway and is gradually falling in its rotation towards the sun. It is now unbearably hot and getting hotter all the time. There is no more night. Only the blazing unbearable sun. Society has began to break down. There are water and food shortages. A young artist named Norma (Lois Nettleton) decides to stay in her apartment building but potential intruders and the intolerable heat threaten her safety... One of the greatest Twilight Zone episodes ever made, The Midnight Sun uses a constrictive setting to weave a wonderfully compelling end of the world story and even conjures an outrageous twist ending in the bargain. Rod Serling proves to be well ahead of the curve in pondering the ecological fragility of the Earth and Lois Nettleton is terrific as Norma and allows the story to rest squarely on her shoulders. Bette Garde is also effective as her worried and elderly landlady Mrs Bronson. The use of make-up to convey heat and humidity is excellent in The Midnight Sun - the characters believably looking as if they are caked in sweat and dehydrated at all times. Amazingly, this episode was shot in just three days. It's incredible really that something of this quality could be made so quickly. Though the production is low-budget and fairly static this story does a wonderful job in conveying a world that is coming to an end. Atmosphere is conveyed by snippets of radio broadcasts and a sense that it's becoming more and more difficult to find out what is happening outside and in the wider world as a whole. You get a sense of society as we know it just starting to break and lose its cohesion offstage. There is some nice understated gallows humour here too at times. There is a palpable sense of inevitable doom about the characters and situation in The Midnight Sun. The theme of this episode, that of mankind being insignificant and powerless in the face of greater forces like nature, fate, and an indifferent universe, is a classic Twilight Zone sort of scenario and beautifully cooked here to perfection. The Midnight Sun is a brilliant episode. The story here has an enjoyable apocalyptic feel and constant air of impending disaster. You feel hot just watching. A STILL VALLEY (Director: James Sheldon, Writer: Rod Serling) "The time is 1863, the place the state of Virginia. The event is a mass blood-letting known as the Civil War, a tragic moment in time when a nation was split into two fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation. This is Joseph Paradine, Confederate cavalry, as he heads down toward a small town in the middle of a valley. But very shortly, Joseph Paradine will make contact with the enemy. He will also make contact with an outpost not found on a military map - an outpost called the Twilight Zone." Confederate scout Sergeant Joseph Paradine (Gary Merrill) finds a valley full of Union soldiers who all seem to be frozen in time. A mysterious old man named Teague (Vaughn Taylor) may hold the key to this mystery and the stakes could include Paradine's soul... This episode was based The Valley Was Still by Manly Wade Wellman and feels like a filler sort of episode after three classic entries on the spin. The story here is never terribly interesting and while the frozen time concept is mildly arresting we've already had frozen time capers in The Twilight Zone before so Still Valley doesn't exactly score high marks for originality. This episode also has the same problem as Elegy in that the frozen people are obviously just extras and actors pretending to be frozen. You can see them wobbling slightly and trying desperately not to move or blink. Still Valley also lacks the Civil War atmosphere of The Passerby. The performances in Still Valley are lively enough to mitigate some of the flaws but - alas - not all of them. Ultimately this a rather forgettable Twilight Zone episode that never really grabs your attention or lodges in the memory very much. Still Valley is by no means an out and out clunker but it is decidedly average and too often more of a chore than a pleasure to sit through. This is definitely one of those Twilight Zones where you might find your attention starting to drift in places. Still Valley is ultimately rather derivative and disappointing. C+ THE JUNGLE (Director: William Claxton, Writer: Charles Beaumont) "The carcass of a goat, a dead finger, a few bits of broken glass and stone, and Mr Alan Richards, a modern man of a modern age, hating with all his heart something in which he cannot believe and preparing, although he doesn't know it, to take the longest walk of his life, right down to the center of the Twilight Zone." A wealthy engineer named Alan Richards (John Dehner) scoffs when he's told that a tribal curse has been placed on him because he oversaw a hydroelectric dam project in Africa which desecrated ancestral land. However, Richards is not scoffing anymore when the African curse seems to follow him back to the streets of New York... The Jungle is a simple but effective little horror yarn with some nice moments of unease and atmosphere and a strong central turn by Dehner. There's some good direction when Richards walks through New York at night and the streets become increasingly lonely, strange and alive with the throbbing drums and animal noises of the jungle - in this case a very urban jungle! This is basically a spin on the voodoo story - a frequent staple in horror down the decades. The arc of Richards is good fun here because we see him go from doubting Thomas and sceptic to terror stricken over the course of the story. Richards feels a lot like the sort of villain they would have in one of those EC Horror Comics. He didn't care about the traditions and rights of people in Africa. He simply wanted to get his dam built and pocket the money. For that he will of course pay the price of making a very unwelcome visit to the Twilight Zone. There's not an awful lot of plot in this story but it doesn't really matter. What this episode sets out to do it does well. It's atmospheric, quite creepy, and generally an entertaining and enjoyable half hour of horror anthology fun. Nice pay off at the end too. B ONCE UPON A TIME (Director: Norman Z McLeod, Writer: Richard Matheson) "Mr Mulligan, a rather dour critic of his times, is shortly to discover the import of that old phrase, 'Out of the frying pan, into the fire,' said fire burning brightly at all times in the Twilight Zone." Woodrow Mulligan (Buster Keaton) is a janitor in 1890 who travels to the present day future thanks to a remarkable 'time helmet' a scientist has invented. Woodrow was unhappy in 1890 but finds the future is even worse and desires to go back to his own time. This proves to be a comically complex task though to say the least... Once Upon a Time is a comedy episode that serves as an affectionate homage to the silent film era. The great Buster Keaton (who Matheson met and was determined to get on the show) is a delight and Stanley Adams lends decent support as Rollo (a man who quite fancies going back in time) but - while a nice idea - Once Upon A Time never really feels like The Twilight Zone and becomes a little tiresome in the end. The best parts of the film are constructed to mimic silent shorts from the heyday of Keaton. Some of his antics here are amazing considering his age as he runs around and falls off bicycles. It's a shame though that a long sequence in a repairman's shop rather sucks the energy and spirit out of the episode. Buster Keaton, who was only five years away from his death here, is still spry and enjoyable to watch onscreen but the antics over the time helmet never quite manage to sustain enough interest to make this anything especially noteworthy. The main problem with Once Upon a Time is that you do unavoidably end up wondering why you are watching an elderly Keaton go through his silent film shenanigans in a Twilight Zone episode when you can simply watch one of his classic films and shorts instead and get the undiluted authentic real thing (so to speak). It's fun and enjoyable to see the great Buster Keaton in Once Upon a Time but the episode itself is only average. It runs out of steam fairly soon and is not something you could see yourself returning to much but it is worth a watch just once to see Buster Keaton. C+ FIVE CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN EXIT (Director: Lamont Johnson, Writer: Rod Serling) "Clown, hobo, ballet dancer, bagpiper, and an army major - a collection of question marks. Five improbable entities stuck together into a pit of darkness. No logic, no reason, no explanation; just a prolonged nightmare in which fear, loneliness and the unexplainable walk hand in hand through the shadows. In a moment we'll start collecting clues as to the whys, the whats and the wheres. We will not end the nightmare, we'll only explain it - because this is the Twilight Zone." Five strangers - Army Major (William Windom), Clown (Murray Matheson), Ballerina (Susan Harrison), Tramp (Kelton Garwood), and Bagpiper (Clark Allen) - find themselves trapped together in a metal cylinder with no memory of how they got there. How did they end up in here? Where are they? And more to the point, how do they escape? This episode's title is a variation on the Pirandello play Six Characters in Search of an Author. Five Characters in Search of an Exit is an enjoyably offbeat and surreal Twilight Zone with a memorably bizarre get out of jail ending. The strangeness of the situation the characters find themselves in here is always interesting and the preposterous costumes merely add to the off-kilter aura. The always solid William Windom is well cast as the nominal lead (his army officer is the most determined to escape) and Murray Matheson adds to the claustrophobia with his nutty clown character. Five Characters in Search of an Exit might ultimately be an exercise in frustration but it isn't an episode you'll forget in a hurry. The Spartan setting is in many ways the greatest strength of this episode in that the mystery is so perplexing and weird that you are immediately fascinated and curious to see what the explanation for this strange state of affairs is. The episode is at its most gripping when the characters (led by the army officer) make a determined attempt to escape. The twist at the end is so far out you can't help but just go along with it. Five Characters in Search of an Exit is a terrific little episode and up there with the most memorable Twilight Zone stories. A- A QUALITY OF MERCY (Director: Buzz Kulik, Writer: Rod Serling) "It's August, 1945, the last grimy pages of a dirty, torn book of war. The place is the Philippine Islands. The men are what's left of a platoon of American Infantry, whose dulled and tired eyes set deep in dulled and tired faces can now look toward a miracle, that moment when the nightmare appears to be coming to an end. But they've got one more battle to fight, and in a moment we'll observe that battle. August, 1945, Philippine Islands. But in reality it's high noon in the Twilight Zone." In the last days of World War II in the Pacific, young Lieutenant Katell (Dean Stockwell) orders his men to assault a cave in which Japanese soldiers are holed up. The Japanese troops are already beaten for they are weak, starved, and trapped. The attack ordered by Katell seems unnecessary and it will undoubtedly come at the cost of the lives of some of his men. Katell's tired officers and men try to persuade him to call off the attack but he refuses to listen. The stubborn Katell is naturally about to take a trip to The Twilight Zone... For some reason the World War 2 episodes of Twilight Zone were frequently slightly disappointing and A Quality of Mercy doesn't really manage to do much to alter that general perception. This episode is neither especially good or awfully bad or rather somewhere in the middle. Katell's encounter in the Twilight Zone forces him to look at things from another perspective and Serling seems a little too on the nose at times with his screenplay. Although the acting is good the make-up is unavoidably hokey looking (and perhaps a trifle racist to modern eyes) when Stockwell is made to look Japanese. Albert Salmi and a young Leonard Nimoy are also part of a very good ensemble cast. This story was shot on a jungle set at Hal Roach Studios and the fatigue and war weariness is convincing. Serling served in World War 2 himself so was writing from experience. Maybe he experienced a young officer himself who came in and tried to make a name for himself by staging some suicidal attack - desperate to get something on his CV before the war ended. Serling's anti-war sentiments were very heartfelt and real but occasionally he could wear his heart on his sleeve a little too heavily in screenplays like this. A Quality of Mercy has a great cast but the actual twist (and thus the device which gives the story its fantastical Twilight Zone tilt) is rather clunky and never terribly compelling. This is a very average episode on the whole despite the good work by the cast. Albert Salmi as Causarano is sort of like Serling in this story, expressing the writer's own thoughts and view points. C+ NOTHING IN THE DARK (Director: Lamont Johnson, Writer: George Clayton Johnson) "An old woman living in a nightmare, an old woman who has fought a thousand battles with death and always won. Now she's faced with a grim decision - whether or not to open a door. And in some strange and frightening way she knows that this seemingly ordinary door leads to the Twilight Zone." Wanda Dunn (Gladys Cooper) is an old lady living alone in a dark tenement building that has been condemned and is due to be demolished. She hasn't opened her door for decades because she is terrified of "Mr Death". She believes that death can assume a variety of guises and that if she ever let someone in they might be death come to claim her. However, when a young policeman named Harold (Robert Redford) is shot in the snow outside her door he begs her to let him in and she has a big decision to make. Not only that but a Contractor (RG Armstrong) from the company due to stage the demolition of the building wants to get in too to talk to her. Wanda must make a decision on what to do with the injured policeman in the snow and confront her deepest fears... Nothing in the Dark is a decent enough story about the unavoidable nature of death and our attitude to shuffling off this mortal coil at the end of life. This episode is quite moving at its best and has a dreamlike sort of quality. Stage actress Gladys Cooper affects a cockney accent here (which works better than that might sound) and it's her performance that gives Nothing in the Dark much of its gravitas and charm. Robert Redford is rather wooden in an early role here but it's not as if he ruins the episode or anything. He's decent enough. This is a gentler sort of Twilight Zone story and has quite an uplifting quality by the end - despite the somewhat morbid and dark subject matter. You wouldn't say Nothing in the Dark was a classic but it's pretty good on the whole. Look out for RG Armstrong too as a building contractor who is desperate to talk to Wanda because he's in charge of the demolition. This is all about fear of death but George Clayton Johnson suggests death is something that we should consider to be part of a natural process. Perhaps it comes with a gentle whisper and is merely the beginning and not the end. B ONE MORE PALLBEARER (Director: Lamont Johnson, Writer: Rod Serling) "What you have just looked at takes place three hundred feet underground, beneath the basement of a New York City skyscraper. It's owned and lived in by one Paul Radin. Mr Radin is rich, eccentric and single-minded. How rich we can already perceive; how eccentric and single-minded we shall see in a moment, because all of you have just entered the Twilight Zone." The wealthy Paul Radin (Joseph Wiseman) invites three people - Mrs Langford (Katherine Squire), Reverend Hughes (Gage Clark), and Colonel Hawthorne (Trevor Bardette) - he feels have wronged him in the past to his New York skyscraper and tricks them into believing that an Atomic strike has occurred. Radin says they can all take refuge in his luxurious nuclear shelter on one condition. They must offer an apology for their actions. However, none of these guests are in the mood to give Radin Radin the apology he craves... One More Pallbearer is an episode that promises more than it actually delivers. The premise is quite intriguing at the start but it soon becomes bogged down in a talky and rather dull story that soon begins to stretch our patience. The monologues are overwritten and it doesn't help that we have more sympathy for Radin than we do the three guests who refuse to apologise to him - which surely wasn't intentional? Radin's guests value their pride and integrity more than their lives, which is of course admirable and brave, but for some reason they just come across as annoying in One More Pallbearer! This negates the core theme of the story. Joseph Wiseman (famously the first ever James Bond villain in 1962) is very watchable and crisp here as Radin but maybe makes the character too sympathetic in the end. One More Pallbearer also suffers from a rather preposterous double twist ending that will probably have you rolling your eyes and groaning. This episode is interesting at first but ends up disappointingly mediocre. By the way, I love the rather luxurious nuclear bunker that Radin has constructed! C+ DEAD MAN'S SHOES (Director: Montgomery Pittman, Writer: Charles Beaumont)