For Christmas, I received the complete DVD box set of The Twilight Zone…and I was immediately transported back to my youth.
Saturday afternoons were full of Twilight Zone re-runs. Creepy, moody, fascinating stories that seemed very unearthly in all their black and white glory. As a youngster, I only recognized the series for its other-worldy qualities, and its nightmarish vision.
As an adult, I recognize it for what it truly is…one of the most meticulously well written, well acted, and gorgeously filmed pieces of art ever committed to celluloid. The last gasp of greatness from the golden age of television…and a show that was not only ahead of its time, but transcends time itself.
The Twilight Zone is more than a collection of epic films that fit in your pocket. It is the sum total of one man’s singular vision: a vision that encompasses a desire to shout down the forces of extremism, violence, racism, prejudice, and selfishness. A vision that celebrates the complexity of life, the innocence of youth, the power of pure faith, the healing nature of forgiveness, the ruthless power of justice, and the confronting of fear itself…even if that fear is death. The Twilight Zone is Rod Serling’s masterpiece of humanism, aided and abetted by some of the best creative minds of television’s formative years - men and women who shared his vision of what the world SHOULD be like, even as it exposes the uncomfortable truths regarding our ACTUAL world.
I could wax lyrically on and on about this series - a series that continues to have enormous power here in the early days of the 21st century. Instead, I’m going to direct you, fearless readers, to a few seminal works about the series, as well as offer you my recommendation of must see episodes…
ROD SERLING & THE TWILIGHT ZONE: The 50th Anniversary Tribute
Written by Douglas Brode and Carol Serling
Think of this as a printed DVD commentary, combined with a philosophical analysis. It divides the episodes into various categories and topic, and seeks to demonstrate when the power of each lies, and how they are effectively communicated to the audience.
Occasionally surprising, and often as poignant as the episodes themselves, Brode & Serling’s book is both a lovely work of analysis and a love letter to a dear departed friend (and husband, in Carol Serling’s case). It’s also book-ended by a lovely set of essays, backgrounding Rod Serling’s place in the golden age of television, and how that legacy lives on to this day. A glorious read from start to finish.
Written by Marc Scott Zicree
A bit more harsh on the surface than the previous book, it’s more of an episode guide and a behind-the-scenes book. That said, it’s also not afraid to give critical commentary — it’s analytical, informative and unafraid to be critical, even as it praises the quality of the series and explores the successes and failures behind-the-scenes.
Readers might not agree with all the commentary, but as an encyclopedic work of scholarship on Twilight Zone, it’s second-to-none. All television history and analysis should be this thorough.
As for my recommendations…here is a small selection:
(1) THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
“What kind of world where ugliness is the norm and beauty the deviation from that norm? You want an answer? The answer is, it doesn’t make any difference. Because the old saying happens to be true: beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in this year or a hundred years hence, on this planet or wherever there is human life, perhaps out amongst the stars.”
A film noir morality play, shot through with physical & metaphysical shadows so deep it would make Orson Wells blush and Alfred Hitchcock weep with joy In hindsight, it’s constructed so simply and elegantly that you want to kick yourself for not seeing the path, down which the episode calmly & methodically leads you…
…until the final revelation, which manages to say so much about beauty and conformity and identity. If there were a single, archetypal episode of the Twilight Zone — one that succinctly offers Rod Serling’s vision on a silver platter — then it is The Eye of the Beholder.
(2) THE OBSOLETE MAN
“Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under “M” for mankind — in the Twilight Zone.”
Another parable on the toxicity of political extremism and conformity, The Obsolete Man highlights the power of a single, ordinary individual, in the face of a state seeking to subsume everyone to a single, brainwashed identity. Shot like an expressionist-era German film, it offers fulfillment and justice, hand-in-hand. It comes complete with a Burgess Meredith performance that is the final word on the “everyman” character, and a finale that neatly (with just the right amount of pity) turns the tables, turning the accuser into the accused. A meditation on appearance and substance, it’s one of the most fascinating episodes in the canon.
(3) DEATH’S HEAD REVISITED
“All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes — all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers.”
My first ever exposure to the horrors of the Holocaust came with this episode, and it continues to demonstrate its power in the present day. It doesn’t have the budget of a Schindler’s List, and it doesn’t offer the full-on horror of a documentary such as Memory of the Camps…
…yet it tells you all you need to know about the nature of evil: the walking corpses, the jack-booted, strutting animals that buried their hearts and souls in the earth, side-by-side with the bodies of the innocent. The ingredients are simple: two amazing actors, an empty, run-down set, and a few sound effects and lighting…generic Twilight Zone ingredients that add up to one of the most quietly terrifying and truthful episodes of the entire series. Every student of history, of human nature…hell, every member of the human race…should watch this episode.
(4) NOTHING IN THE DARK
“There was an old woman who lived in a room and, like all of us, was frightened of the dark. But who had discovered in the minute last fragment of her life that there was nothing in the dark that wasn’t there when the lights were on. Object lesson for the more frightened among us, in or out of the Twilight Zone.”
Death in the Twilight Zone is a character, but he is also one of the most misunderstood denzines of the series’ fictional universe. Death comes time and time again, not as a monster or an explosive force, but as a gentleman simply doing his work, and not after anything other than an acceptance of the inevitable conclusion of life.
Nothing in the Dark is the pinnacle of this branch of the Twilight Zone, and it contains one of the most heart-breaking performances in the series, courtesy of Wanda Dunn. A woman trapped by her own fears, consuming her heart and soul, finally given release. Once again, it’s another two hander (only three actors ever appear in the entire episode), set in a single location. It’s another exercise in the simplicity & elegance of Rod Serling’s vision of life and death. In short, it’s a pocket-size biblical epic, requiring only a run-down tenement flat, and a single woman letting go of a tired, worn out existence. It’s glorious conclusion will leave you teary-eyed, and it is easily my personal favourite episode of the entire series.
(5) THE INVADERS
“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.”
If some of the most successful episodes are two-handers in a single location, how about an episode with virtually NO dialogue and a single actress who never utters a word. If morality and parable are one side of the Twilight Zone coin, the other is out and out terror: the stalking unknown, hiding in the dark corners, terrorizing body and soul. The Invaders is designed to do nothing more than frighten the hell out of its audience…not only with its depiction of a battle of wills, but with the inherent mystery behind the identity of the tiny, horrific invaders…
…who turn out to be the last thing anyone expected! A simple object lesson, cloaked with a blanket of old-fashioned terror: you should never be certain of anything…especially in the Twilight Zone.
(6) NIGHTMARE AT 20 000 FEET
“Tonight, he’s traveling all the way to his appointed destination, which, contrary to Mr. Wilson’s plan, happens to be in the darkest corner of the Twilight Zone.”
Has there ever been an episode parodied, mocked, revisited, reworked, and reimagined as much as this one? It sits side-by-side with The Invaders as pure, out-and-out scarefest, with a slab of identity crisis & psychology thrown in for good measure. We have an airplane cabin, a fuzzy monster in the rain, a performance for the ages from a young William Shatner, and the pinnacle of direction from future film maestro Richard Donner (the man who will go on to give the world The Omen, Superman, and Lethal Weapon). What more do you need to create a masterpiece of terror?
I defy anyone to watch this alone on a dark night, and not jump in their seat during the revelation of the gremlin. This is the kind of episode that the label iconic was designed to describe…
