After the shocking end to last week’s Secret Invasion, you weren’t sure what was next for the six episode series.
With Maria Hill’s death, it was clear that the show was filled with strife and stakes. That continued this week.
The writing on this show has been tremendous so far. It is not afraid to allow its superstars to provide the drama through their words even as it is throwing in some excellent action.
Samuel L. Jackson is getting an opportunity to flex his acting chops as well as to dive into the character of Nick Fury, something that we have not had a chance to see before.
One of my favorite scenes in the episode was the sit down discussion between Samuel Jackson and Don Cheadle, Nick Fury and James Rhodes respectfully. The depth of character really shone through with two remarkable actors who have played these parts for years.
Olivia Colman. I absolutely love her. Her few scenes that we have gotten so far has been tremendous. She is such a joy, and watching her torture a Skrull was just strangely appealing. Colman is an amazing talent and she brought a freshness to the horrible moment, even when she was cutting off fingers. I want more of Oliva Colman in the MCU.
This villain, Gravik, has been presented as a force. Kingsley Ben-Adir has been outstanding so far and brought his mission the right amount of menace. I loved how the show shot Gravik while he was in the passenger seat of the car being driven by Emilia Clarke’s G’iah. The angle of his head and the lighting made him look very Skrull-like even though he was in his human shape. This group of Skrulls led by Gravik feels very much like the way the Flagsmashers should have felt during The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I enjoyed that show, but there was no doubt that the Flagsmashers part was the weakest of the series. This feels like it is working on every level.
Another awesome scene was between Nick Fury and Talos on a train. Once again, it is a talking scene, but it is as compelling as anything we’ve gotten before. Plus, Talos dropped some info in the “tell me something I don’t know” game that knocked Fury over. Over a million Skrulls were on earth. Whoa.
The episode also ended with a surprise. Hey, Nick, are you married to a Skrull?
Secret Invasion episode 2 was a wonderful balance and it continues to wonder exactly whom you can trust.
Ventriloquist dummies can be creepy. And that is even before they start talking and moving on their own.
“You’re watching a ventriloquist named Jerry Etherson, a voice-thrower par excellence. His alter ego, sitting atop his lap, is a brash stick of kindling with the sobriquet ‘Willy.’ In a moment, Mr. Etherson and his knotty-pine partner will be booked in one of the out-of-the-way bistros, that small, dark, intimate place known as the Twilight Zone.”
I really enjoyed this episode. I liked how there is still some question about whether Willy was real or whether Jerry was simply hearing voices and was out of his mind. Even with the bizarre ending of switching places, I can see how this could be dealing with mental illness on the part of Jerry.
“What’s known in the parlance of the times as the old switcheroo, from boss to blockhead in a few uneasy lessons. And if you’re given to nightclubbing on occasion, check this act. It’s called Willy and Jerry, and they generally are booked into some of the clubs along the ‘Gray Night Way’ known as the Twilight Zone”
Cliff Robertson, Uncle Ben from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, was our lead actor here and he does a wonderful job of showcasing the anxiety, the fear and uncertainty of this situation.
Paranoia is a major feel in The Dummy as Jerry is never 100% sure what was happening. The way Willy would move ever so slightly as it sat in the dressing room emphasized this to the audience.
Am awesome episode. One of the best of season three so far.
So when two men land their spaceship on this planet, they discover a bizarre surprise.
“The time is the space age, the place is a barren landscape of a rock-walled canyon that lies millions of miles from the planet Earth. The cast of characters? You’ve met them: William Fletcher, commander of the spaceship; his copilot, Peter Craig. The other characters who inhabit this place you may never see, but they’re there, as these two gentlemen will soon find out. Because they’re about to partake in a little exploration into that gray, shaded area in space and time that’s known as the Twilight Zone.”
The land where they landed contained natives who were tiny, Lilliputian-type people. And Peter Craig found his gigantic size a major advantage. So much so that he started to consider himself a god to these people, going as far as to crushing these people’s homes with his foot.
When the ship was repaired, Fletcher tried to get Peter to come with him, but he would refuse, pulling a gun and demanding that Fletcher leave him alone. Peter had convinced the little people to build a statue in his honor.
However, the power would be fleeting as another ship landed on the rock and this was a race of people who were much large than Peter. In fact, they grabbed Peter and crushed him in their hands. When they left, the little people pulled down the statue upon the dead body of Peter.
“The case of navigator Peter Craig, a victim of a delusion. In this case, the dream dies a little harder than the man. A small exercise in space psychology that you can try on for size in the Twilight Zone.”
“Four O’Clock”
One of the straight up villains of The Twilight Zone, Oliver Crangle was played by Theodore Bikel with a glorious zeal unlike we have seen to this point.
“That’s Oliver Crangle, a dealer in petulance and poison. He’s rather arbitrarily chosen four o’clock as his personal Götterdämmerung, and we are about to watch the metamorphosis of a twisted fanatic, poisoned by the gangrene of prejudice, to the status of an avenging angel, upright and omniscient, dedicated and fearsome. Whatever your clocks say, it’s four o’clock, and wherever you are it happens to be the Twilight Zone.”
Oliver Crangle is like the Q of our time. Going out of his way to do his battle with those he perceived as ‘evil’ in the world. He did not see himself as evil though, as most great villains do. They see themselves as the hero of their story.
Crangle was certainly a bit crazy. His overall plan to make all people he deemed evil two-feet tall is super-villain plots at the best. I also enjoyed the twist ending with Cringle becoming two-feet tall himself, revealing that he was, in truth, evil.
How did this happen? That is never mentioned. Could there have been more depth to this character? Sure. Still, I found the performance of Theodore Bikel to be over-the-top goodness.
“Hocus-Pocus and Frisby”
Hey, there was Floyd, from Mayberry!
Mr. Frisby is the ultimate liar. That might be too unfair. He is certainly a ‘tall tale’ teller.
“The reluctant gentleman with the sizable mouth is Mr. Frisby. He has all the drive of a broken camshaft and the aggressive vinegar of a corpse. As you’ve no doubt gathered, his big stock in trade is the tall tale. Now, what he doesn’t know is that the visitors out front are a very special breed, destined to change his life beyond anything even his fertile imagination could manufacture. The place is Pitchville Flats, the time is the present. But Mr. Frisby’s on the first leg of a rather fanciful journey into the place we call the Twilight Zone.”
With the theme of ‘boy who cried wolf’, Mr. Frisby, who has a tale to tell about his exploits that are, at best, inaccurate, was abducted by aliens because the aliens were looking for specimens that were the most impressive and knowledgeable of their kinds and they did not understand the idea of lying. So, obviously, with Mr. Frisby’s continued hyperbole and outright fibs, they thought they found the best human going.
Mr. Frisby is able to escape by playing his harmonica, which was a sound that was dangerous to the aliens, and, ironically, when Mr. Frisby was telling the story that was actually true to his friends at his store, they did not beleive him.
This was fine, but a little bit of Mr. Frisby went a long way. It did become somewhat annoying after awhile.
“The Trade-Ins”
“Mr. and Mrs. John Holt, aging people who slowly and with trembling fingers turn the last pages of a book of life and hope against logic and the preordained that some magic printing press will add to this book another limited edition. But these two senior citizens happen to live in a time of the future where nothing is impossible, even the trading of old bodies for new. Mr. and Mrs. John Holt, in their twilight years, who are about to find that there happens to be a zone with the same name.”
This story was a love story featuring the couple of Mr. and Mrs. John Holt, who had been married for fifty years, but whose bodies were feeling the stress of age. Fortunately, there was a technology that allowed them to switch from their old bodies and trade them in for younger versions.
Unfortunately for the Holts, the process cost $10,000 dollars, and they only had half of that. This created the conflict in the episode as Mr. Holt tried to go about finding the extra money, but failing to make it in a high stakes poker game.
In the end, Mr. Holt had the process done, but decided to take up the return policy because he could not see himself living the life of a young man without the love of his life.
Sweet and romantic. It was a decent episode with a message that showed the positive side of humans, which we do not see as often in The Twilight Zone.
The strange numbering comes from Amazon Prime/Paramount +. For some reason, they had the episode “The Gift”, which is listed as episode 32 everywhere else I looked, was in at number 28. I am not sure the reason it is in a different order on Prime even though it had never been in an incorrect order as of yet. So I am listing it as the order is supposed to be, not the one on Prime.
“Person or Persons Unknown”
He is David Gurney… or is he?
“Cameo of a man who has just lost his most valuable possession. He doesn’t know about the loss yet. In fact, he doesn’t even know about the possession. Because, like most people, David Gurney has never really thought about the matter of his identity. But he’s going to be thinking a great deal about it from now on, because that is what he’s lost. And his search for it is going to take him into the darkest corners of the Twilight Zone.”
David woke up after a night of drinking and, without warning, his wife did not recognize him. He thought of this as a joke, but when the people at work did not know him either, things get harder for him.
He desperately tries to find proof of his existence, failing at every turn. The performance by Richard Long was solid, though he did take a while to really grasp what was going on. You would think that he would have come around earlier than what he did.
Then, The Twilight Zone pulled a switch much like they did in “The Midnight Sun”. David wakes up again, understanding that everything he had gone through was a dream. However, his wife Wilma was not the wife he knew, looking completely different.
I feel as if this was another Twilight Zone episode that started strong, with a really good premise, but that did not deliver an equally potent conclusion.
“The Gift”
As I mentioned earlier, this was out of order on Prime, but I did not realize it until it was underway so I decided to leave it as is. I am still referring to it as episode 32, though.
This was not a very good episode. Performances were weak or uninspiring and the story, which was meant to be a parable tied to the story of Jesus Christ, it misses its mark badly.
“The place is Mexico, just across the Texas border, a mountain village held back in time by its remoteness and suddenly intruded upon by the twentieth century. And this is Pedro, nine years old, a lonely, rootless little boy, who will soon make the acquaintance of a traveler from a distant place. We are at present forty miles from the Rio Grande, but any place and all places can be the Twilight Zone.”
Pedro was one of the weakest child actors we have seen in The Twilight Zone. His performance was very wooden and lacking any sort of depth. I do not like calling out child actor’s performances, but when one is such a vital piece of the story, I can’t ignore it.
The gift given by the alien was, of course, something that we all wish we would have had and it shows the way fear and hatred can cause problems in the world today. The message is good, but the delivery of the message felt heavy-handed and lacking the sufficient subtlety to make this sci-fi story worthwhile.
This was a weird episode that was intended to be a sweet one, but lent itself into something less than sweet.
“It’s been said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things: science fiction, the improbable made possible; fantasy, the impossible made probable. What would you have if you put these two different things together? Well, you’d have an old man named Ben who knows a lot of tricks most people don’t know and a little girl named Jenny who loves him — and a journey into the heart of the Twilight Zone.”
Ben and Jenny are friends. Ben can do amazing things, such as shapeshift and other magical tricks. Trouble is that Ben is being pursued by two men who appear to be from the police.
Jenny is staying with her aunt Agnes, played by Nancy Kulp, most well known as Ms. Hathaway of the Beverly Hillbillies. Aunt Agnes was pretty mean, always yelling at Jenny and wanting Ben to go away forever.
The relationship between Jenny and Ben was meant to be sweet, but it really felt odd to me and was a drawback to the episode. That made this a weird installment of The Twilight Zone. Ben was revealed as an alien who was a king of his planet and the two police were actually subjects trying to bring him back. There were a lot of this episode that just did not work well for me.
“Little Lost Girl”
“Little Lost Girl” is a fascinating episode with some cool special effects creating a bizarre dimension, showing how different the they can be.
“Missing: one frightened little girl. Name: Bettina Miller. Description: six years of age, average height and build, light brown hair, quite pretty. Last seen being tucked in bed by her mother a few hours ago. Last heard: ‘ay, there’s the rub,’ as Hamlet put it. For Bettina Miller can be heard quite clearly, despite the rather curious fact that she can’t be seen at all. Present location? Let’s say for the moment… in the Twilight Zone.”
An opening between dimensions appears in the bedroom of Bettina Miller and she falls into it. Crying out for her parents, Chris and Ruth, they come to her room. They can hear her, but they cannot find her no matter where they look. When Mack the dog runs under the bed and disappears as well, they know that something weird was going on.
Fortunately, Chris has a friend named Bill who is, coincidentally, a physicist. He comes up with the alternate dimension theory and tells Chris that the dog was the key. The dog is trying to lead Bettina out from the dimension. Chris, however, winds up falling inside the portal too.
The special effects in the dimension was really cool, making everything feel unsettling and oft balance.
Chris is instructed that he must not move and that Mack had to lead Bettina to him. Chris kept calling his daughter and the dog and finally they came to him. Bill is able to pull them free of the dimension and back into their house.
Bill lets Chris know that the portal was closing and that Chris was actually just partially inside the dimension. Bill was worried that the portal would shut before Chris was out, leaving half of him in each dimension.
Bill and Mack the dog were clearly the MVPs of this episode. It just goes to show you that it is always a good idea to make friends with a physicist and have him on speed dial for those middle of the night dimensional emergencies.
My friend Todd told me that this was his favorite episode of The Twilight Zone and that I would love it. I know that the expectations were high for the episode as it is considered one of the iconic episodes of the entire run.
“Respectfully submitted for your perusal — a Kanamit. Height: a little over nine feet. Weight: in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds. Origin: unknown. Motives? Therein hangs the tale, for in just a moment, we’re going to ask you to shake hands, figuratively, with a Christopher Columbus from another galaxy and another time. This is the Twilight Zone.”
I enjoyed the way the episode started, with Michael Chambers locked inside a room by himself as instructions came over the speakers. It immediately places the audience on their guard. With his own narration used, it set a new feel for the episode since typically all we get for narration is Rod Serling at the beginning and the end of episodes.
The Kanamit aliens looked great, using their telepathy to talk is a really cool idea too. I see that Richard Kiel was the actor who played the giant aliens. Kiel also became famous for his role as Jaws in several James Bond movies.
Now, I did figure out the twist early in the episode. When I first thought about it- the fact that the Kanamits were actually doing everything for the humans because they were preparing them as food to eat- it seemed like a joke, a Soylent Green-esque moment. However, as the episode continued and when the cover title was deciphered, I had a pretty good idea that my guess was indeed the correct one.
I did love the twist and I am sure that it was sensational to the people of 1962 when this first aired. This was based on a short story of the same name by Damon Knight from 1950.
“The recollections of one Michael Chambers, with appropriate flashbacks and soliloquy. Or, more simply stated, the evolution of man. The cycle of going from dust to dessert. The metamorphosis from being the ruler of a planet to an ingredient in someone’s soup. It’s tonight’s bill of fare from the Twilight Zone.”
Todd was right again. I did love this episode. I kind of wish that I did not figure out the twist so early because I can see that line “It’s a Cookbook!” being a great horrific reveal.
This was actually the worst stretch of five episodes that I have seen from the series, with a couple of okay ones and a couple really low ones.
Spoilers
“The Hunt”
This was the best of the five episodes during this stretch. A good old country mountain man and his dog. He rather go coon huntin’ than much of anything else.
“An old man and a hound-dog named Rip, off for an evening’s pleasure in quest of raccoon. Usually, these evenings end with one tired old man, one battle-scarred hound dog, and one or more extremely dead raccoons, but as you may suspect, that will not be the case tonight. These hunters won’t be coming home from the hill. They’re headed for the backwoods — of The Twilight Zone.”
Hyder Simpson and his dog Rip went out hunting raccoon despite his wife Rachel’s objections. Rachel’s premonition came true as Rip chased the raccoon into the water and was drowning. Simpson dove in after his beloved dog, but neither came up.
Hyder awoke in the woods and returned to his home only to realize that no one could hear him and that he and Rip was dead. He found a fence that shouldn’t have been there and followed it, finding a gate where a man sat. The man said this was the gate to heaven but Hyder could not take Rip in with him. Hyder refused and decided to keep walking down the road for eternity.
Soon he came across another man who knew who he was and told him that the other guy was on the gate to Hell. This was actually the path to heaven. Hyder asked about the coon hunting in heaven.
An episode for dog lovers everywhere. I found it funny that the dog’s name was Rip (rest in peace).
“Showdown with Rance McGrew”
One of the dumbest episodes I have seen so far.
It appeared to be another Western episode. However, it was a Western TV series being filmed and the star of the show was Rance McGrew, arrogant, pompous, demanding.
“Some one-hundred-odd years ago, a motley collection of tough mustaches galloped across the West and left behind a raft of legends and legerdemains, and it seems a reasonable conjecture that if there are any television sets up in cowboy heaven and any one of these rough-and-wooly nail-eaters could see with what careless abandon their names and exploits are being bandied about, they’re very likely turning over in their graves—or worse, getting out of them. Which gives you a clue as to the proceedings that will begin in just a moment, when one Mr. Rance McGrew, a 3,000-buck-a-week phoney-baloney discovers that this week’s current edition of make-believe is being shot on location—and that location is the Twilight Zone.”
Like several other episodes, Rance found himself transported to the past in the actual saloon like the show was taping at, but the crew was gone. The real Jesse James (who was the villain in the episode) was looking to make Rance pay. Apparently, Jesse was able to watch Rance on TV and knew all about the career path of the actor.
This got even stupider as well as Jesse wound up back in the present with Rance as his new “agent” and insisted on changes to the script to make the real life Western characters look better.
More comedy attempted. There have been very few comedic episodes of The Twilight Zone that worked.
“Kick the Can”
A nice little episode of the wish for youth and the cliché that you are only as old as you act/feel.
“Sunnyvale Rest, a home for the aged – a dying place, and a common children’s game called kick-the-can, that will shortly become a refuge for a man who knows he will die in this world, if he doesn’t escape into – The Twilight Zone.”
While the episode was harmless and did carry a decent message, there was not much to it as it carried on. The end was fairly expected and the way the staff treated these old people, especially Charles was shameful. The idea that Charles was considered senile because he wanted to stay young by finding the magic in a kid’s game was mean-spirited. The fact that his best friend Ben did not support his friend was quite off too. Admittedly, I did like the end with Ben losing out on the magic.
“A Piano in the House”
Speaking of mean-spirited, the episode ‘A Piano in the House’ is one of the most mean-spirited episodes of The Twilight Zone I have seen. I’m not sure the ending was sufficient of comeuppance for the cruelty shown by lead character, Mr. Fitzgerald Fortune.
“Mr. Fitzgerald Fortune, theater critic and cynic at large, on his way to a birthday party. If he knew what is in store for him he probably wouldn’t go, because before this evening is over that cranky old piano is going to play ‘Those Piano Roll Blues’ with some effects that could happen only in the Twilight Zone.”
Fortune had purchased a player-piano for his young bride’s birthday. Fortune discovered that the music played by the piano had strange effects on the listeners and he planned on using it during the party on some of his guests.
I especially felt bad for Marge Moore, played wonderfully by Muriel Landers, as the piano made her do things intended to humiliate her (and the whole crowd laughed). I am not sure why Fortune targeted Marge outside of simply sadism.
“The Last Rites of Jeff Mytlebank”
Roscoe P. Coltrane is back once again!
That is James Best is back as our titular character, a man who died and, during his funeral, sits up and is apparently alive… two days later!
“Time, the mid-twenties. Place, the Midwest, the southernmost section of the Midwest. We were just witnessing a funeral, a funeral that didn’t come off exactly as planned, due to a slight fallout from the Twilight Zone.”
This episode seemed to be hinting at the fact that people can get themselves riled up and lose common sense when confronted with rumors and speculation, especially when they are not necessarily the brightest of people (that is a relevant comment for today’s political world too).
There was a lot of exposition here, particularly at the very end when Jeff was being confronted by the town people about him being a demon that had taken over the dead body of Jeff. The ending was somewhat lackluster and lacking. This concept felt like it could have been much ore than what it turned out to be.
“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 has been hiding away from Mr. Death for years. She has seen him when others have died and it has led her to shut herself inside a condemned building and not leave the premises. When a police officer is shot outside her door, she opens it up to help him.
However, everything was not as it seemed, as is common in The Twilight Zone. When another man comes to try and convince Wanda to leave because the building has to be torn down, she realized that that man could not see the injured police officer in the room.
Turns out that the police officer was Mr. Death, offering Wanda a chance to come with him. He shows Wanda her own dead body, which lies on the bed in the room.
Well acted episode and the dialogue between Robert Redford and Gladys Cooper, who played Wanda, was a highlight.
“One More Pallbearer”
Not sure how the purpose of this episode. Was it meant to be a revenge tale or simply a practical joke meant to teach the subjects an abject lesson?
Either way, I did not like this.
“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.”
Paul Radin held grudges from his life and he is looking for a way to save face. He pretends that he has called back three people form his past who have treated him poorly and he pretends that the world is going to be destroyed in a nuclear bombing. He provides them safety in his bomb shelter but he asks for apologies. None of the ‘victims’ want to stay. They all prefer to go to their homes and loved ones and die together if they must. This drives Paul crazy.
None of this makes any sense and it is just filled with exposition and nonsense.
“Dead Man’s Shoes”
The shoe is on the other foot, literally.
Another weaker episode of the show, as it follows poor hobo Nathan Bledsoe as he finds a dead body and steals that body’s new shoes.
“Nathan Edward Bledsoe, of the Bowery Bledsoes, a man once, a specter now. One of those myriad modern-day ghosts that haunt the reeking nights of the city in search of a flop, a handout, a glass of forgetfulness. Nate doesn’t know it but his search is about to end, because those shiny new shoes are going to carry him right into the capital of the Twilight Zone.”
The shoes belonged to a gangster named Dane, whose spirit then possessed Nathan in an attempt to gain revenge on the gangster that killed him.
However, Dane shows himself not very smart as he winds up dead again and dumped in another alley (this time, it being poor Nathan). Another hobo takes the shoes and apparently starts the circle all over again.
I hardly recognized Dean Stockwell when he first came on the screen with the American army during “A Quality of Mercy” episode from season three. I had seen this episode low on lists of Twilight Zone lists, but I did not think it was that bad. However, I could tell what it was docked for. It’s the same thing that I am going to dock it for.
Dean Stockwell played Lieutenant Katell, a young officer during World War II (the last day actually) who arrived with a platoon that had lost its last two leaders. They had a group of Japanese trapped in a cave, but they were not sure what they were going to do. Katell showed up, ready to rush the cave and kill all the enemy soldiers.
The the Twilight Zone took over.
Katell found himself in the body of one of the Japanese soldiers, but earlier in the war, and the man in charge was acting the same way he did when arriving with the Americans. He was able to see how mercy could go a long way.
The problem? Stockwell had face paint, eyes done up and a horrendous Japanese accent. I do not know why it was decided that Stockwell perform this in such a stereotypically racial manner, but this choice ruined the scenes for me and really weakened an otherwise strong episode.
EYG Hall of Famer Leonard Nemoy was in the episode too as one of the American soldiers.
This evening, I went for five season three episodes and we got all kinds of variety.
“The Midnight Sun”
Whoa, what a hopeless feeling episode this was. Apocalyptic, twice within.
The earth’s orbit has been changed and it is now moving toward the sun and the temperatures on earth were getting hotter and hotter. Two women, Nora and Mrs. Bronson, were the only people remaining in their apartment building, trying to stay cool and survive the heat.
Water, looters, their own minds all were struggles they needed to face. As the news gets worse, the two women get closer to the end. Mrs. Bronson succumbs to the heat and Nora seems to be ready to go as well.
Then we learn that Nora was actually in a fever dream and that none of what we saw was real. However, we learn from Mrs. Bronson and the doctor that was attending Nora that the world was off its orbit but going away from the sun. The very opposite was happening, the planet was freezing to death.
This episode could certainly be used today as a metaphor for climate change, I’m not sure that would have been the basis for the idea back in 1961. The episode gives us a picture of how the human race would react to such an event, with a lot of anger, frustration and selfishness. Even though there would also be some good people as well.
“Still Valley”
Civil War conflict mixed with the occult and the devil… good times.
Not sure how to feel about this one.
“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.”
Paradine wound up in the town, but he found all the Union troops frozen still. Not dead. Not asleep. Just standing still. He did not know how this happened, but… he would find out.
An old man was there and he claimed to have used black magic to freeze the Yankees. He did so by reading spells out of a book labeled ‘witchcraft.’ By doing so, he said that he had to align himself with Satan. The old man was dying and gave the book to Paradine, who returned to his camp and explained what happened, proving that he had this power.
The end was strange because Paradine was uncertain if he should continue to use the book because he had to renounce God as well as align with the devil. He ends up throwing the book into the fire.
Not the best episode I have seen. The characters were inconsistent and choices did not make much sense. Why did Paradine suddenly realize that he had to renounce God when he already used the book to freeze a troop of Union soldiers off camera? And these soldiers were meant to go to Gettysburg after this.
Not a very good episode.
“The Jungle”
“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.”
Alan Richards and his wife Doris have just returned from Africa where Alan was on a business trip. He was apparently cursed by some natives and his wife was really superstitious. She snuck all kinds of good luck charms, including a lion’s tooth, into their home and his pockets.
He leaves the tooth behind at a bar. Can you guess what happened next? I bet you can.
This one was dumb. Alan kept hearing drums and animal sounds as he tried to get home, only to be mauled by a lion that was on his bed (perhaps after already eating Doris?).
The animal sounds were unintentionally funny and the things that happened to Alan along the way were more and more ridiculous. And where was Doris?
“Once Upon a Time”
I thought this was a really creative and interesting episode. Featuring Buster Keaton himself, this episode was a tribute to the silent pictures that Keaton made his fame in.
The episode started out in a literal silent picture, following along Keaton as Woodrow Mulligan from the year 1890. It had the background music, the intertitles giving the audience dialogue to read and plenty of slapstick humor that was prevalent in the silent era of Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin.
Mulligan worked as a janitor in a laboratory where the head scientist had created a ‘time helmet’ which gave the wearer a chance of going to any year and spend 30 minutes (this time seemed to change throughout the episode. A bit of a plot hole here). Mulligan put it on and was transported to 1961.
In 1961, we get sound, including Mulligan speaking aloud. It was no longer a silent picture. He met up with a man named Rollo and then it felt very much like a ‘Laurel and Hardy’ type film.
I enjoyed this tribute to the era of silent films and the icon Buster Keaton. It felt like one of those ‘very special episodes’ of shows(like “Atomic Shakespeare” for Moonlighting). I love the big swing for the episode.
“Five Characters in Search of an Exit”
Okay, I did not see that coming.
Five characters stuck in a strange circular prison. They could not remember anything. All they knew were what they were: A clown, a bagpiper, a ballerina, a tramp and a major.
The major was the newest arrival and was struggling trying to make sense of what had happened. He desperately tried to find an exit from their prison, trying everything. He would not give up even with the others not supporting him. The clown, in particular, was spending more time taunting him or making fun of him than being useful. The ballerina though seemed to believe in the major.
They stood on each other’s shoulders (in a fun pit of camera work) and tried to climb out, only to fall. The ballet dancer was injured, but that still did not deter the major, who set up a rope with the end of his sword to use as a grappling hook.
This time, the major makes it to the top and falls into a pile of snow. This is when we find out the truth… they were all dolls in a container during a toy drive for Christmas.
“Just a barrel, a dark depository where are kept the counterfeit, make-believe pieces of plaster and cloth, wrought in a distorted image of human life. But this added hopeful note: perhaps they are unloved only for the moment. In the arms of children, there can be nothing but love. A clown, a tramp, a bagpipe player, a ballet dancer, and a Major. Tonight’s cast of players on the odd stage—known as—The Twilight Zone.”
What a twist that was. No way I saw that coming. The ending took this episode to a much higher level than it had been. This was a top notch pay off. There have been some episodes where they have a great build but the ending is disappointing. This one stuck the landing, big time.
The Twilight Zone returned to the Old West for another story involving Lee Marvin and Roscoe P. Coltrane.
This episode was a creepy tale of fear and revenge. A local rapscallion named Pinto Sykes is gunned down by a crew of townsfolks. The man, Conny Miller, who had been hired by the town to hunt Pinto down, returned to the town to find out that Pinto was already dead and buried.
The townspeople told Conny that Pinto claimed on his deathbed that if Conny ever came to Pinto’s grave, that Pinto would reach up and grab him.
The others in the bar, led by Roscoe (I know his name was not Roscoe, but the actor, James Best, is best known by me for his role as the Sheriff on Dukes of Hazzard), laid wagers that Conny did not have the courage to go and kneel by Pinto’s graveside. Conny made he bet (though honestly, he was not really quick about it).
The next day, Conny was found dead over the grave.
This was very atmospheric and creepy. I liked most of this episode. The only issue I had was that Conny did not end up shooting Pinto, it was someone else in town. We only heard about Conny and Pinto’ relationship and we did not see any of it. Why did Pinto hold such a negative feeling toward Conny? I’m really not sure.
Lee Marvin and Lee Van Cleef appeared in this episode and both men are veterans of Western movies, lending a high level of credibility to the show.
“It’s a Good Life”
A monster story about the worst monster ever… a little boy named Anthony.
“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.”
We spent the episode watching the adults cower to this little boy, telling him how his bad behaviors were the right thing and how they were happy that he just killed thee people or created this three headed animal and then killed it.
I really wanted someone to step up and do something about Anthony. There was a time when one of the dinner party members, drunk as he was, tried to get the others to do something about the boy and he wound up getting turned into a jack-in-the-box and eventually sent to the “cornfield” which was a place Anthony sent all people who had negative thoughts.
Bill Mumy played Anthony after playing Billy in “Long Distance Call.” He was very sinister and unsettling as the little monster. I wish there was some form of resolution to the episode, but it is a well known, iconic episode.
“Deaths-Head Revisited”
One of the most haunting episodes of The Twilight Zone yet. Deaths-Head Revisited is a comment on the horrendous circumstances behind the concentration camps run by the Nazis before and during World War II.
A former Nazi SS captain, calling himself Schmidt, came to Dachau, Bavaria to go back to the Dachau concentration camp, walking around the compound, reveling in the remembrances and nostalgia. He is met by a man whom he takes as a caretaker of the camp. He does recognize the man as Alfred Becker, a former prisoner at the camp.
Becker takes Schmidt around the camp, as frightening sounds continued around. Finally, Becker told him that Captain Lutze (Schmidt’s real name) was to be put on trial for his crimes against humanity. Lutze realizes that Becker had been killed in Dachau years before and that this was a ghost facing him. Lutze wound up going mad, and would end up taken away in the present day to a mnetal instution.
The doctor who examined Lutze said “Dachau. Why does it still stand? Why do we keep it standing?” An answer mentioned in Serling’s closing narration:
“There is an answer to the doctor’s question. 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. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God’s Earth.”
The only criticism I have for this episode, which I found extremely powerful and haunting, was that I wish Lutze was not such a one-note villain. When he returned to Dachau, he was just as sinister, just as sadistic as he had ever been and he was outward about it. I would have like to have seen more than just the mustache-twirling villain that he was. Something with more layers would have made this even more powerful. Even still, this is one of my favorite episodes so far.
Marvel Studios is back on Disney + with the first episode of Secret Invasion dropping on the service this morning. As someone who has enjoyed all of the Disney + series to some extent, I was looking forward to the debuting show, especially since it puts Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury front and center.
Based loosely on the Marvel Comics event series from a few years ago, Secret Invasion deals with a group of Skrulls and their desires to find a new homeworld. Fury and Carol Danvers promised to help them find a place at the end of Captain Marvel, but apparently, that promise fell to the backburner. This has made some of the Skrulls angry and ready to take matters into their own hands.
Secret Invasion kicks off with an episode that gives us a taste of what the series will be about. Paranoia. Trust, or lack thereof.
Even though the series is about a group of shape shifting aliens, Secret Invasion feels very grounded. It is more of a thriller/political espionage story than a superhero one. The Skrulls make a perfect foil for this type of series as their ability to shape shift makes them very dangerous.
Everything is centered around the performances of Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn. Sam Jackson’s Fury feels damaged, shaken and unhinged by the blip. Taking this character who we have known since Iron Man and making him vulnerable by his own experience of being dusted is very smart. Add to that his body struggling against him because of age or because of wear increases the feeling that Nick Fury is different.
Ben Mendelsohn’s Talos is clearly still torn between the desire to help his people and to be loyal to Fury. His loss of his wife offscreen and the anger of his daughter G’iah (Emily Clarke) will give him a ton to play as well.
The opening credits have stirred up a ton of controversy online. The AI used to create the credits is a hot-button issue and caused some backlash against the series. I found the opening credits to be very ominous and fitting for the series, but I can say I do not know much about this subject.
Olivia Colman made her first appearance in the MCU as Sonya Falsworth as a member of British MI6. Sonya could be considered the Nick Fury of British Intelligence. Her few moments of screen in episode one whetted the appetite to see more from this powerhouse actor.
Okay, so that is far enough before we talk about the shock ending of the episode. During this Skrull terrorist attack on Moscow, leader of the Skrull revolution, Gravik, who is played very ominously by Kingsley Ben-Adir, in the shape of Nick Fury, shot and apparently killed Maria Hill, played by Cobie Smulders. Smulders, who has been around the MCU since near the beginning, is a beloved character and he apparent demise will cast a pall across the series. I do not want Maria Hill to die, but I can see how her death here would really be a powerful trigger.
This was a very good opening episode and I was captivated by what was happening. The feeling that you are never sure what is happening and that there is no one to trust was highlighted by the events of this series. I am looking forward to finding out where this heads next.
Okay, so not Castro, but a man named General Ramos Clemente. But it is Peter Falk, famously who would become Lt. Columbo- one of the most iconic detectives of all-time, playing this role. I have to say it was distracting. That is not the fault of the episode, but I could not help that.
You see this trend in the time having white actors play the ethnic roles. Someone like Falk playing this character today would be controversial. I do think Peter Falk does a decent job in the role in this episode, but he had several mannerisms that were distracting and did end up pulling me out of the episode.
The episode dealt with the idea of paranoia and of the suspicion of powerful people that those around them have their own motivations. We see the slightest suggestions, in this case a mirror giving the reflections of betrayal, lead to Clemente taking his friends and supporters and executing them all.
“Ramos Clemente, a would-be god in dungarees, strangled by an illusion, that will-o’-the-wisp mirage that dangles from the sky in front of the eyes of all ambitious men, all tyrants—and any resemblance to tyrants living or dead is hardly coincidental, whether it be here or in the Twilight Zone.”
Season three started kind of meh, but then we got three really good episodes in a row.
“The Shelter”
Realistic episodes of The Twilight Zone are few and far between. Most of them have some bit of magical/mystical buts to them. However, every once in awhile we come across those that are grounded in reality.
“The Shelter” has no mysterious aliens, magical curses or unbelievable circumstances. It is about something that could have easily happened in the early days of the Cold War.
It is Dr. Bill Stockton’s birthday and a bunch of the neighborhood friends were over celebrating. When a message from the President comes across the television that there were incoming unidentified objects approaching the US and that people should take cover.
The people assumed that these were incoming nuclear weapons fired from an enemy. Bill, who had been constructing a bomb shelter beneath his home, got his wife and son to work, organizing food, water and essentials while the neighbors, who had teased and made fun of Bill for his choice, scattered back to their houses for their own families.
As Bill locked his family into the bomb shelter, the others came to him, begging Bill to let them inside the shelter too. Bill, saying that it was only built for three, refused. This sent the group into a rage, forming a mob mentality. They were in such a panic that they were even turning on each other, showing their anxieties and their natural bigotry.
Eventually, they constructed a battering ram and broke open the door to the bomb shelter. Just as they had burst through, the announcement that the objects were identified as satellites and were not bombs came through, leaving the mob shocked and dejected over their behaviors.
Honestly, if I were Dr. Bill Stockton, I would have immediately told these people to get the hell out of my house and to never come back. Perhaps he was filled with remorse over the decision to leave everyone outside the shelter, but there was little for him to do.
Watching these friends and neighbors turn on each other and become a hysterical mob was difficult and knowing that this is they nature of the human race is hard to swallow. It was a very compelling episode.
“The Passersby”
Civil War. North vs. South. Southerners vs. Yankees. There have been plenty of stories told about this tragic time of our country’s history.
Episode four of season three of the Twilight Zone heads into the past to the end of the Civil War for a specific ghost story.
A widowed Southern woman sits out front of her home as a wounded sergeant approaches asking for water. Other wounded soldiers walked on the street past the house. We have no idea where they are heading.
The woman told a story about her husband’s death and how she planned on killing the next Union soldier that passed by. The Sergeant told her that a Union soldier had saved his life and that he hoped that she would not do so. When a Union soldier stopped, silhouetted on his horse, and asked for water, she did shoot him, though the gun apparently did not hit him. With light from the Sergeant’s lantern, it was revealed that the soldier on the horse had a terrible injury to his eyes and face, and everyone realized that he was dead… and that they were dead too, the sergeant from the war and the woman from a fever she had.
This is where the episode should have ended. However, it went too far, feeling the need to explain everything going on with needless exposition. What was going on was obvious and then, with the arrival of Lincoln, who was also dead at this point, the episode took a bit of a turn.
“Incident on a dirt road during the month of April, the year 1865. As we’ve already pointed out, it’s a road that won’t be found on a map, but it’s one of many that lead in and out of the Twilight Zone.”
This was excellent until the last five minutes or so. The episode was still exceptional, but the need to explain everything weakened a very eerie episode.
“A Game of Pool”
Jack Klugman and Jonathan Winters are actors known for some of their comedic performances, but this was a straight-forward dramatic turn for both and they deliver a compelling and thrilling episode, all around a game of pool.
“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.”
When Jesse Cardiff challenged the late, great Fats Brown to a pool match to determine who was the best pool player of all time, Jesse never expected the challenge to be answered Nor did he expect that he would be playing the game of pool for his life.
Jesse, who spent his entire life in the pool halls honing his game above everything else, placed his life on the line for this challenge.
There was a lot of tension built during the game as the two men argued and debated about their lives and the challenge before them. When Jesse won, Fats was not unhappy. This is because of the twist that Fats knew. As the best ever, Jesse had to replace Fats as the pool challenge and could not enjoy the afterlife.
A really good episode with a twist at the end that helped take the episode to another level. Two great performances too as Klugman and Winters worked extremely well together.
Season three started off with two well known faces as the only two actors on the show: Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery.
“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.”
One of the issues of this show is that there is no real explanation for what was going on here and who these two people were. They had been on different sides as we see when they first interact (a great little fight scene between them) and the fact that they are wearing different uniforms.
I will say that this idea was interesting and I was curious about what was going on. However, as with many Twilight Zone episodes, it felt like the episode wrapped up too quickly and the ending felt forced. This would have been a story that required another twenty minutes or so to make things make more sense.
The final narration from Rod Serling indicated that this had been a love story, but none of that had come through even remotely and that is a major drawback to the episode. It was clearly a comment on the idea of the Cold War and the dangers of nuclear war.
“The Arrival”
The second episode of the season takes some big swings, but does not quite land the plane, if you forgive the horrible pun.
A mystery is set up in the episode.
“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 aluminum, 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.”
An airplane lands at the end of its voyage but nobody is on the flight. No passengers. No pilots. No stewardesses. No one.
What a cool idea for a story. I was fully into the mystery that the show was setting up for me. Speculating about what could possibly have happened was a lot of fun. The show dropped a few hints along the way that the viewers should be thinking about- such as why was there no relatives of the missing flight passengers calling looking for updates?
The resolution of the mystery was also intriguing as it turned out the plane was just an imagined thing. It kind of reminded me of the comic book Department of Truth by James Tynion IV, with how group delusions can become real.
However, this was not a group delusion as everyone else disappeared when Mr. Sheckly proved his idea. Turned out that this was all an illusion from his own mind because of guilt from his failure to solve this plane’s disappearance from 17 year prior.
While I like the overall concept of the episode, I do think the actual execution of the idea was lacking. Was there a triggering event that caused Sheckly to imagine this into existence? The beginning when Sheckly wasn’t yet here and the other employees (who were shown to be in Sheckly’s imagination too later) felt odd in retrospect.
I was in this episode from the beginning. I just feel as if the conclusion did not live up to the prologue.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 