July 16, 2023- number 129, 139

Spoilers

Once again, Amazon Prime’s listing of season five is not in the accepted order for The Twilight Zone. On my source pages, “The Night Call” was S5 x E19, but Amazon Prime had it following the last episode, “Uncle Simon,” which is S5 x E8. Since that is the order I have on Amazon, I will be watching it in that order, but labeling it on the posts as the episode number the sources have it at.

With some investigation, I found out this fact on Wikipedia, “ ‘Probe 7, Over and Out’ was intended to air a week after the premiere of ‘Night Call,’ which was scheduled for Friday, November 22, 1963— the previous episode, ‘Uncle Simon,’ having aired a week earlier on November 15. Hours before ‘Night Call’ was to air though, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Thus it was rescheduled, as were all of the other network shows. As a result, ‘Probe 7, Over and Out’ immediately follows ‘Uncle Simon’ in original broadcast order. ‘Night Call’ was eventually broadcast on February 7, 1964.”

“Probe 7, Over and Out”

I was missing the fig leaf.

This whole episode felt familiar, and it is not because it became an origin story for Adam and Eve. It was because there were plenty of pieces from the episode that we had already seen on previous episodes of the series.

“One Colonel Cook, a traveler in space. He’s landed on a remote planet several million miles from his point of departure. He can make an inventory of his plight by just one 360-degree movement of head and eyes. Colonel Cook has been set adrift in an ocean of space in a metal lifeboat that has been scorched and destroyed and will never fly again. He survived the crash but his ordeal is yet to begin. Now he must give battle to loneliness. Now Colonel Cook must meet the unknown. It’s a small planet set deep in space, but for Colonel Cook, it’s the Twilight Zone.”

However, it turned out to be earth, early in its existence. We saw that already a couple of times. Colonel Cook revealed his first name to be Adam, and the woman he meets, in her own weird language, reveals herself to be named Norda… Eve Norda. They went off together at the end of the episode toward a more area with more green, flora, fruit trees… almost as if it were a garden.

Sadly, Cook’s original planet was being destroyed by a nuclear war as he is told by a transmission from a General on his planet. The Twilight Zone certainly used its stories to speak out against the dangers of nuclear weapons.

I didn’t hate the Adam and Eve twist reveal, but it sure came out of nowhere and most of this episode felt like a retread of past episodes such as “Two,” “The Lonely,” and “People Are Alike All Over,” and “I Shot an Arrow into the Air.”

“Night Call”

This one was really creepy. I loved it.

“Miss Elva Keene lives alone on the outskirts of London Flats, a tiny rural community in Maine. Up until now, the pattern of Miss Keene’s existence has been that of lying in her bed or sitting in her wheelchair, reading books, listening to a radio, eating, napping, taking medication—and waiting for something different to happen. Miss Keene doesn’t know it yet, but her period of waiting has just ended, for something different is about to happen to her, has in fact already begun to happen, via two most unaccountable telephone calls in the middle of a stormy night, telephone calls routed directly through—the Twilight Zone.”

A phone call in the middle of the night. At first, no sound. Eventually, a voice that is repeating the word, ‘Hello’ over and again.

The scene where Miss Keene received the call with the repeating ‘Hello’ on it was truly as frightening as this series has been. There was a real creepy factor to it.

Gladys Cooper played Miss Keene and does an amazing job conveying the fear and the confusion of the lonely old lady, confined to a wheelchair and spending each day just going through the motions. The fact that the phone company and her own housekeeper were little help in calming her down was even worse (though a horror trope for certain).

I also loved the twist of how the call was being made from a local cemetery and how the phone company just said that there was a phone wire down and Miss Keene could not be receiving any calls, even though we all knew that she was.

Taking a trip to the cemetery and discovering that the downed phone line was across the grave of her former fiancé, Brian Douglas, and that Miss Keene herself was responsible for his death, in the same accident where she was paralyzed. I loved this end.

I kept thinking to myself as the episode went on that this one was really nailing it, but it needed something at the end to bring it all home. There have been Twilight Zone episodes that have been great with the premise and the set up, but failed to deliver on the finale. I am happy to say that this one was not the case.

In fact, it may have been even more sad because Miss Keene had told the voice to leave her alone and when she found out who it was, she realized that he always did what she had said. This meant that she would no longer be able to talk to him and she would continue to be as lonely as she has been. A very ironic end to a very creepy and satisfying episode.

July 15, 2023-numbers 127,128

Spoilers

“The Old Man in the Cave”

We are back to the futuristic apocalyptic world of The Twilight Zone. Oddly enough, they once again call this 1974, ten years after the official release of the episode. Not sure why they believe that 1974 is the year for all of these events, but it is fine for me.

“What you’re looking at is a legacy that man left to himself. A decade previous he pushed his buttons and a nightmarish moment later woke up to find that he had set the clock back a thousand years. His engines, his medicines, his science were buried in a mass tomb, covered over by the biggest gravedigger of them all—a bomb. And this is the earth 10 years later, a fragment of what was once a whole, a remnant of what was once a race. The year is 1974 and this is The Twilight Zone.”

A small group of military men, led by James Coburn’s Major French arrived in a small town where the population followed the instructions of an unseen old man who lived in a cave and only communicated with a man named Goldsmith, played by John Anderson.

This is very much of a parable for the belief in religion and faith in something that you could not see. The Old Man in the Cave supposedly gave the settlers information that has helped them keep alive since the nuclear war back in 1964. Goldsmith was determined that they would follow every proclamation from the Old Man. Major French arrived as the skeptic and began throwing everything back in Goldsmith’s face.

When it was revealed that the Old Man was nothing more than a computer, the faith of all of the settlers was broken and they were happy to have followed Major French’s ‘do-whatever-you-want’ attitude. Of course, it led to them all dying, except for Goldsmith, whose faith was unaltered.

I was not a big fan of the end of this episode. It felt pretty heavy-handed and it could have done without the monologue at the end.

“Uncle Simon”

Hey, is that Robby the Robot?

Danger, Uncle Simon, Danger!

This one is a mean-spirited episode with a fairly lack of a solid story.

“Dramatis personae: Mr. Simon Polk, a gentleman who has lived out his life in a gleeful rage; and the young lady who’s just beat the hasty retreat is Mr. Polk’s niece, Barbara. She has lived her life as if during each ensuing hour she had a dentist appointment. There is yet a third member of the company soon to be seen. He now resides in the laboratory and he is the kind of character to be found only in the Twilight Zone.”

Poor Barbara. She is tormented for 25 years by this rotten old man, and then gets taunted and tormented by Robby the Robot for the foreseeable future, demanding hot chocolate.

I was behind Barbara so much that her pushing the robot down the stairs, or letting her Uncle Simon lay at the foot of the stairs with a broken back until he died seemed reasonable behavior to me.

I’m not sure if we were supposed to feel for Uncle Simon, because I did not. I am not sure if we were supposed to think Barbara was a cold-hearted, money-grubbing woman, because I felt that there was a reasonable reason for that behavior. I’m not sure why poor Barbara was made to suffer as much as she did in this episode.

This one was not one of my favorite episodes. I did not understand the meaning behind the episode or the theme that The Twilight Zone almost always has.

July 14, 2023- number 124, 125, 126

Spoilers

“A Kind of Stopwatch”

Another episode of The Twilight Zone that features time and ways to manipulate it is the fourth episode of season five.

“Submitted for your approval or at least your analysis: one Patrick Thomas McNulty, who, at age forty-one, is the biggest bore on Earth. He holds a ten-year record for the most meaningless words spewed out during a coffee break. And it’s very likely that, as of this moment, he would have gone through life in precisely this manner, a dull, argumentative bigmouth who sets back the art of conversation a thousand years. I say he very likely would have except for something that will soon happen to him, something that will considerably alter his existence—and ours. Now you think about that now, because this is The Twilight Zone.”

This is another protagonist that is not easy to root for because he is completely irritating and annoying. There have been several of those over the first four seasons + and it always hurts the episode when the main character is not very likable. Even when they are learning a lesson, there has to be some component that the audience wants to see him receive a redemption. McNulty does not seem that type.

I do like the twist at the end that causes McNulty to have everyone on earth frozen in time, leaving him alone and isolated even though everyone is right there. Though the ending works, everything that led up to the twist did not work nearly as well.

“The Last Night of a Jockey”

This episode of The Twilight Zone was a one-man-show with the one and only Mickey Rooney. Rooney’s performance was one of the highlights of the show, but there is not too much else afterwards.

“The name is Grady, five feet short in stockings and boots, a slightly distorted offshoot of a good breed of humans who race horses. He happens to be one of the rotten apples, bruised and yellowed by dealing in dirt, a short man with a short memory who’s forgotten that he’s worked for the sport of kings and helped turn it into a cesspool, used and misused by the two-legged animals who’ve hung around sporting events since the days of the Coliseum. So this is Grady, on his last night as a jockey. Behind him are Hialeah, Hollywood Park and Saratoga. Rounding the far turn and coming up fast on the rail—is the Twilight Zone.”

Mickey Rooney is the only character that we meet in this episode and he carries everything through his dialogue and the physical imagery when the sets keep getting smaller to show that Rooney had become bigger… something that the voice in his head apparently has the ability to make happen.

We have seen reflections in mirrors before during this series, including in “The Mirror” and in “Nervous Man in a four Dollar Room.” Grady’s alter ego spewed negatives and insults back at him, making the jockey scream in anger and frustration. Then there is an ironic ending that messes up Grady’s life all the worse.

This one was not a favorite, though Mickey Rooney was a strong actor for the role.

“Living Doll”

Now this is more like it.

Telly Savalas starred in one of the classic episodes of The Twilight Zone as Talky Tina, the talking doll, brings forth glorious vengeance upon bad parents.

The horror trope of the evil living doll has been covered a ton of times from The twilight Zone episode “The Dummy” from season three to the Chucky franchise of movies and TV or MEGAN from a movie earlier this year. When done well, the creepy doll can be very effective, and this episode is one of the best of the series.

“Talky Tina, a doll that does everything, a lifelike creation of plastic and springs and painted smile. To Erich Streator, she is the most unwelcome addition to his household—but without her, he’d never enter the Twilight Zone.”

Telly Savalas played Erich Streator, the step-father to a little girl named Christina, whose mother Annabelle (interesting, another well known killer doll. I wonder if the movie Annabelle took her name from this character?) had purchased Talky Tina for her.

This was a triggering topic since apparently there is some kind of problem where Erich and Annabelle were unable to conceive their own child. Though nothing specific was mentioned for this, there was enough hints dropped to understand the issue.

Savalas does an amazing job as the nutcase husband who does some truly cruel things and says some really inappropriate words to both Annabelle and to Christina. When he specifically yells at Christina that he was not her father, I gasped. I understood why Talky Tina took an immediate dislike to Erich. I was also happy to see Talky Tina get the last word on this situation after Erich had done so much to try and destroy the doll. I did not see Talky Tina as an evil force as I see Chucky or MEGAN or other forms of killer dolls. I see Talky Tina as a protector. Sure, that is how MEGAN started off too, so maybe Talky Tina would have gone crazy eventually as well.

There is, of course, an argument that could be made that Talky Tina was all Erich’s own mind and guilt over his inability to have children with Annabelle that led to this delusion of a talking doll. Sure, Talky Tina does imply a threat to Annabelle after she has killed Erich by having him trip and fall down the stairs, but that was done as a cool tag for the episode. I think the whole mental illness issue is in play for the backdrop of this episode.

Telly Savalas was excellent in this episode. I think he would have to be in consideration for best performance of the series for this role.

July 13, 2023-number 123

Spoilers

“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”

We have finally arrived at an episode that is arguably the most iconic, most well known episode of The Twilight Zone of all-time.

“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” starred William Shatner and featured the fate of a man who had just recovered from a nervous breakdown and who was the only person to be able to see a gremlin on the wing of the airplane that he and his wife were flying upon.

“Portrait of a frightened man: Mr. Robert Wilson, thirty-seven, husband, father and salesman on sick leave. Mr. Wilson has just been discharged from a sanatorium where he spent the last six months recovering from a nervous breakdown, the onset of which took place on an evening not dissimilar to this one, on an airliner very much like the one in which Mr. Wilson is about to be flown home—the difference being that, on that evening half a year ago, Mr. Wilson’s flight was terminated by the onslaught of his mental breakdown. 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.”

The set up is brilliant as Mr. Wilson certainly seems to be losing his mind. The fact that he had six months before had already suffered a nervous breakdown centered around an airplane makes everyone doubt what he was claiming. Clearly he was acting like a raving lunatic.

William Shatner knocked this out of the park. His continued descent into a crazed panic, though not insanity, was awesome to watch and the frustration of the gremlin disappearing every time he tried to get someone else to see it was as unbalancing for the audience as it was for him.

The way that Shatner played this made the audience wonder exactly whether or not he was actually seeing something or if it was all in his head. When he wound up stealing the gun and shooting the gremlin by leaning out the emergency window was truly nuts. Shatner showed that he was a damn good shot too considering.

The only drawback is that the gremlin did not look very good. It was comical in appearance, obviously a man in a big furry outfit. Of course, this was 1964 and you have to be understanding about what they were capable of at the time.

I also loved how the damage to the airplane was shown at the very end, proving that Mr. Wilson was not crazy and that he actually had seen the gremlin on the wing of this airplane. Even more, his crazy efforts with the stolen gun potentially saved the entire plane and everybody on it.

Richard Donner, who would be the director of Superman: The Movie, The Goonies, Lethal Weapon, directed this episode. Donner would go ahead and direct five total episodes of The Twilight Zone in season five.

I had seen this episode when I was younger, but this time, I truly appreciated the excellent work done by everybody involved. Sure, the gremlin was not the most frightening looking creature I have ever seen, but the anxiety it created was real. There is a reason this is considered one of the greatest episodes of the show and is remembered decades later.

Of course, it is…

July 13, 2023- number 121, 122

Spoilers

“In Praise of Pip”

Season five of the original Twilight Zone kicked off with an emotional banger.

Jack Klugman returned for his fourth installment of the anthology series after being featured in “Death Ship,” “A Game of Pool,” and “A Passage for Trumpet.” All three of these episodes are very solid to excellent, but, in my opinion, “In Praise of Pip” is the best episode of the series featuring Klugman. It is certainly the most powerful performance from the actor.

“Submitted for your approval: one Max Phillips. A slightly-the-worse-for-wear maker of book, whose life has been as drab and undistinguished as a bundle of dirty clothes. And though it’s very late in his day, he has an errant wish that the rest of his life might be sent out to a laundry, to come back shiny and clean. This to be a gift of love to a son named Pip. Mr. Max Phillips, homo sapiens, who is soon to discover that man is not as wise as he thinks. Said lesson to be learned in the Twilight Zone.”

Max’s son, Pip, is in the Vietnam War and is wounded badly, so badly that they believe that he is dying. The sent a telegram to Max, a lowly bookie who cons young people into making poor gambling bets, that told him that his son was dying. Jack Klugman’s performance for the rest of this episode was heart-breaking.

The young kid who had been conned by Max was being roughed up by the loan shark, Max’s boss Mr. Moran’s goons. Max, after hearing the sad news about Pip, insisted that Moran return the money to the kid he had conned and Max attacked Moran and his henchman, being shot in the gut in the process.

Max wondered about the streets after killing Moran, clutching his wound. He arrived at a closed amusement park, one where he had taken Pip when he was a kid. He saw 10-year old Pip at the park and the pair spent the next hour having fun and spending time together. However, it was time for Pip to leave, telling his father that he was dying. Max prays to God to not take Pip and to take him instead. Max then died on the ground of the amusement park.

Later that year, Pip returned to the amusement park, having survived the surgery that would save his life, thinking about his father.

Admittedly, the story may not have had a classic Twilight Zone ending, but the performance by Jack Klugman, and also Billy Mumy, who also appeared in “It’s a Good Life” and “Long-Distance Call,” does a great job as young Pip.

“Steel”

Rock’em, Sock’em Robots arrive in The Twilight Zone.

“Sports item, circa 1974: Battling Maxo, B2, heavyweight, accompanied by his manager and handler, arrives in Maynard, Kansas, for a scheduled six-round bout. Battling Maxo is a robot, or, to be exact, an android, definition: ‘an automaton resembling a human being.’ Only these automatons have been permitted in the ring since prizefighting was legally abolished in 1968. This is the story of that scheduled six-round bout, more specifically the story of two men shortly to face that remorseless truth: that no law can be passed which will abolish cruelty or desperate need—nor, for that matter, blind animal courage. Location for the facing of said truth: a small, smoke-filled arena just this side of the Twilight Zone.”

Starring Lee Marvin, their boxing robot broke down just before a fight he desperately needed. Marvin decided to take the place of the robot and pretend to be one himself. The robot he wound up facing beat the crap out of him and he gets knocked out in the first round, meaning he only got half of the money he needed.

That was about it. Not sure what the episode’s purpose was. Boxing had been banned in this “near-future” episode, set ten years after its initial release. The story lacked any real oomph and the boxing scenes were not very well executed.

And nobody’s head popped off their shoulders like they should in Rock’em, Sock’em Robots!

July 12, 2023- number 120

Spoilers

“The Bard”

The Twilight Zone just can not do comedy.

“The Bard” is currently my least favorite episode of The Twilight Zone.

“You’ve just witnessed opportunity, if not knocking, at least scratching plaintively on a closed door. Mr. Julius Moomer, a would-be writer, who if talent came 25 cents a pound, would be worth less than car fare. But, in a moment, Mr. Moomer, through the offices of some black magic, is about to embark on a brand-new career. And although he may never get a writing credit on the Twilight Zone, he’s to become an integral character in it.”

There are a ton of issues in this episode. First, the character of Julius Moomer is just as unlikable as any character we have seen in this series. I couldn’t stand listening to this idiot and his overbearing and obnoxious attitude. Second, the comedy was being overlaid with a series of weird sound effects and silly music that made the whole thing feel cartoony and childish. Third, the whole ‘black magic’ section of the plot made no sense and had little, if any, effect on the plot, outside of bringing Shakespeare to the present, a story beat that we see a ton in a series like Bewitched.

We do see an early appearance by Burt Reynolds, playing an actor in the play written by Shakespeare but plagiarized by Julius Moomer. Reynolds is clearly doin an imitation of Marlon Brando, even going as far as referencing ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ and other recent work from playwrights.

The episode had a message about how people not involved in the creative part of TV can change things with their simple say so. They include an advertiser in the scene who made a bunch of changes to the script, even going as far as saying that his wife didn’t like something. Rod Serling had famously had this very trouble and is using this episode to satirize the situation.

This is the final episode of season four. Season four has been up and down with some really strong parts and other episodes that are just horrendous. The Bard falls into that latter category as this episode is a huge clunker. This also marks the final episode of the hour format as season five returned to the half hour episodes. There were considerably more episodes that were hurt by the longer time than episodes that was helped by it.

Tomorrow, I will begin season five, the final season of the original run of The Twilight Zone. There are 36 episodes remaining in the classic EYG Hall of Fame series.

July 11, 2023- numbers 117,118,119

Spoilers

“The Incredible World of Horace Ford”

I swear that I thought this was a young Nick Nolte for the entire episode. When I saw the credits at the end of “The Incredible World of Horace Ford,” I realized that Horace Ford was not played by Nick Nolte, but by Pat Hingle (who would be Commissioner Gordon in the 1989 Batman movie).

“Mr. Horace Ford, who has a preoccupation with another time, a time of childhood, a time of growing up, a time of street games, stickball and hide-‘n-go-seek. He has a reluctance to check out a mirror and see the nature of his image: proof positive that the time he dwells in has already passed him by. But in a moment or two he’ll discover that mechanical toys and memories and daydreaming and wishful thinking and all manner of odd and special events can lead one into a special province, uncharted and unmapped, a country of both shadow and substance known as the Twilight Zone.”

I did not enjoy this episode much and the main reason was the way in which the character of Horace Ford was portrayed. He was loud, childish, and yelled all the time. He had very little rooting factor. Just a few minutes in, I wanted to be done with the character.

That should show what a saint Horace’s wife was. She showed amazing patience and love for this man-child.

The repeating moments on Randolph Street with Horace did not seem to be very important and certainly not vital enough to create such chaos in the lives of Horace’s family. The whole story was quite a mess overall.

“On Thursday We Leave for Home”

This is one of the best episodes for the fourth season, which has had its ups and downs.

“This is William Benteen, who officiates on a disintegrating outpost in space. The people are a remnant society who left the Earth looking for a millennium, a place without war, without jeopardy, without fear, and what they found was a lonely, barren place whose only industry was survival. And this is what they’ve done for three decades: survive; until the memory of the Earth they came from has become an indistinct and shadowed recollection of another time and another place. One month ago a signal from Earth announced that a ship would be coming to pick them up and take them home. In just a moment we’ll hear more of that ship, more of that home, and what it takes out of mind and body to reach it. This is the Twilight Zone.”

William Benteen, who is called Captain Benteen by his people, kept his people alive for 30 years. He kept them thriving on this barren planet and told them hyperbolic stories about the earth that many of them did not remember. He seemed to be a great guy.

However, when that ship arrived to return them to the earth after all these years, Benteen began to show some cracks in his motives. He did not want to give up his power, his control over this group of people and so he began to try to manipulate them into either staying together on earth or, when that did not work, staying on their planet.

Benteen was shown almost to the point of a cult leader, who sees himself as the god of his followers. James Whitmore brought a true panic to the performance of a man who was used to being everything to his people only to find that he was about to lose it all.

“Passage on the Lady Anne”

We now see Alfred from the Batman ’66 series. We recently had Catwoman as the devil one episode and a couple of episodes prior we have Batman ’89’s Jim Gordon. Lots of Bat-folks around the Twilight Zone.

“Portrait of a honeymoon couple getting ready for a journey – with a difference. These newlyweds have been married for six years, and they’re not taking this honeymoon to start their life but rather to save it, or so Eileen Ransome thinks. She doesn’t know why she insisted on a ship for this voyage, except that it would give them some time and she’d never been on one before – certainly never one like the Lady Anne. The tickets read ‘New York to Southampton,’ but this old liner is going somewhere else. Its destination – the Twilight Zone.”

The way to save a marriage, to rekindle your love is to get aboard a ghost ship. I guess that is the overall lesson of this episode. Perhaps the Lady Anne was not yet a ghost ship when the Ransomes get on board, but that was the destiny of the ship.

This episode was filled with romantic characters and those who have suffered losses. Meanwhile the Ransomes are going through plenty themselves while everyone else on the boat was trying to get them to get off.

There were a few holes in the story or things that happen that did not make sense. Eileen Ransome disappeared in the story and was missing for a good chunk of time only to show back up with little explanation. I assume this was done to make her husband Alan worry that something had happened to her and that he would miss her terribly if she had fallen over the side of the ship. This felt very overdramatic for no pay off.

This is another example of a story that had to be bloated out to fit the hour format that should have been in the original half hour one. Too much meat on this bone.

“The Lady Anne never reached port. After they were picked up by a cutter a few hours later, as Captain Protheroe had promised, the Ransomes searched the newspapers for news – but there wasn’t any news. The Lady Anne with all her crew and all her passengers vanished without a trace. But the Ransomes knew what had happened, they knew that the ship had sailed off to a better port – a place called the Twilight Zone.”

We are down to just one more episode of Season 4, which we will watch tomorrow morning.

July 10, 2023-numbers 114, 115, 116

Spoilers

“I Dream of Genie”

The Twilight Zone returns to the world of genies with the season four episode “I Dream of Genie.” I did enjoy the first genie episode with “The Man in the Bottle,” but, unfortunately, this second genie-centric episode really missed the mark.

“Meet Mr. George P. Hanley, a man life treats without deference, honor or success. Waiters serve his soup cold. Elevator operators close doors in his face. Mothers never bother to wait up for the daughters he dates. George is a creature of humble habits and tame dreams. He’s an ordinary man, Mr. Hanley, but at this moment the accidental possessor of a very special gift, the kind of gift that measures men against their dreams, the kind of gift most of us might ask for first and possibly regret to the last, if we, like Mr. George P. Hanley, were about to plunge head-first and unaware into our own personal Twilight Zone.”

George Hanley can not make up his mind about what to wish. He ran through several options and had daydreams about each of them… he was married to a famous actress, had all the money in the world, he was the President of the United States… and none of them made him happy.

None of them made me happy either as they were all pretty dull and did not do much for the story. And the ending, George choosing to be a genie himself to help people, came out of nowhere.

I guess he did not understand that the life of a genie was “phenomenal cosmic powers, itty bitty living space.”

“The New Exhibit”

“Martin Lombard Senescu, a gentle man, the dedicated curator of murderers’ row in Ferguson’s Wax Museum. He ponders the reasons why ordinary men are driven to commit mass murder. What Mr. Senescu does not know is that the groundwork has already been laid for his own special kind of madness and torment found only in the Twilight Zone.”

I liked this one. I have always been a fan of Jack the Ripper and his inclusion in the wax exhibits was cool for me. Honestly though, he was the only ‘murderer’ in the murderer’s row of wax figures that I recognized. The wax figures looked great, really creepy for the 1960s.

I also love the twist at the end with Martin being the true killer and just imagining that the wax killers had done it. It was really dark when his wife dies and he buries her in the basement, covering her with concrete. This was a very dark and creepy episode.

Martin Balsam was excellent as the wax figures-obsessed man, who apparently loved these wax figures over anyone else in his life. I did think it was odd that he was more upset about the murder of Ferguson than he was with the murder of his wife.

I enjoyed the ending, as poor old Martin wound up just another wax figure in a new museum with his five murderer friends.

“Of Late I Think of Cliffordville”

The best part of this episode? Easy. It was Julie Newmar! Catwoman herself. This was the first and only version of the Devil on Twilight Zone played by a woman, and they could not have found a better woman to fill that role.

“Witness a murder. The killer is Mr. William Feathersmith, a robber baron whose body composition is made up of a refrigeration plant covered by thick skin. In a moment, Mr. Feathersmith will proceed on his daily course of conquest and calumny with yet another business dealing. But this one will be one of those bizarre transactions that take place in an odd marketplace known as the Twilight Zone.”

I was not a fan of Mr. Feathersmith. I know that I was not supposed to like him as he was a rotten individual and the episode was put together just to mess with him. I have to say, I laughed out loud when Ms. Devlin (Julie) rebuked Feathersmith’s attempt to sell his soul in payment. She said that they already had his soul years ago. That was great. Plus, then she hit him with the blow that would hurt him the most… making him pay his bill… with money.

Then, she still screwed him over even more as every plan he had when he arrived back in time in Cliffordville flopped.

I was not a huge fan with the ending. It did not make a lot of sense even though it was a nice ironic end.

Julie Newmar was exceptional here and she really carried the story.

July 9, 2023- number 113

Spoilers

“The Parallel”

The early days of the space race provided plenty of story ideas for a sci-fi show such as The Twilight Zone. Here was an episode that did a solid job of taking that idea and doing something new.

As I have stated before, some of the ideas from The Twilight Zone may seem well used to me, but when it was being made in the early 1960s, these concepts had to feel much more original. The idea of a parallel universe with minor differences has been used plenty of times such as Star Trek and Marvel & DC Comics, but it was not as common as it is today with all the use of multiverses in movies.

“In the vernacular of space, this is T minus one hour. Sixty minutes before a human being named Major Robert Gaines is lifted off from the Mother Earth and rocketed into the sky, farther and longer than any man ahead of him. Call this one of the first faltering steps of man to sever the umbilical cord of gravity and stretch out a fingertip toward an unknown. Shortly, we’ll join this astronaut named Gaines and embark on an adventure, because the environs overhead—the stars, the sky, the infinite space—are all part of a vast question mark known as the Twilight Zone.”

I did like much of this episode, but a lot of what was different was dealt with by talking about it and I think it would have been more effective by showing it on the screen. Like when Gaines’ daughter became upset when he had said that he never took sugar in his coffee, that little example is more effective than Gaines going through an encyclopedia and telling us what he found.

I have to say that I kept waiting for another twist at the end of the episode. When Gaines asked who the president of the US was, and they responded Kennedy, I kept waiting for them to say at some point that the president was Bobby Kennedy or something like that to show that Gaines was in yet another parallel universe. That never came and, instead, they had some communication with the other “Colonel” Gaines from the universe where “Major” Gaines had been living for the last week proving that he was not just having a breakdown. This was too pat of an ending for a Twilight Zone episode.

Overall it was an episode that had the potential to be sensational, but only was good.

July 8, 2023- number 112

Spoilers

“No Place Like the Past”

Time travel is always a little wonky.

“Exit one Paul Driscoll, a creature of the twentieth century. He puts to a test a complicated theorem of space-time continuum, but he goes a step further, or tries to. Shortly, he will seek out three moments of the past in a desperate attempt to alter the present, one of the odd and fanciful functions in a shadowland known as the Twilight Zone.”

Paul uses his time machine to go back into the past in an attempt to stop some terrible tragedies of history: he tries to warn the people of Hiroshima, he tries to assassinate Hitler, and he tries to save the Lusitania from being sunk to start WWI. He failed at all of them.

This is where this episode went off the time travel rails.

He came back to the present to his friend and colleague Harvey. He told him that he failed at his attempts and Harvey then stated that time was unable to be changed. It made me think that this episode was going to go along the theory of LOST with the “Whatever Happened, happened” style of time travel.

However, almost immediately after stating that the past was immutable, when Harvey discovered Paul’s plan to go back to 1881 and take up residence in a small town in Homeville, Indiana, Harvey immediately warned him that he could cause terrible dangers by changing even one little thing. This was in direct opposition to the immutable comment that Harvey made barely a sentence before.

This type of contradiction derails the concept of time travel immediately. There may have been ways to build tension without hinting that Paul could change the past. The very idea that nothing could be changed would create a distinct problem for one who knows everything. Unfortunately, I could not get past the implication that Paul ‘could have’ changed the past.

When Paul is trying to Paul the school house from burning, he wound up causing the problem himself, which does follow the LOST philosophy of time travel. However, it was so dumb because Paul knew the fire was being caused by a runaway wagon ejecting a lantern to the school. Paul tried to unhitch the horses from the wagon to prevent it from being able to move, and I am sitting watching this supposedly smart man do such a stupid thing. Why not just casually remove the small lantern from the back of the wagon. It was just hanging there. Or just blow out the flame. Both of those would have been a much easier attempt than unhitching the wagon from the horses.

The first act of this episode was pretty decent, but it really went downhill after that.

July 7, 2023- Number 111

Spoilers

“Printer’s Devil”

Burgess Meredith returned for his fourth and final episode of The Twilight Zone. He has appeared in “Time Enough at Last,” “The Obsolete Man,” and “Mr. Dingle, the Strong.”
He is always excellent, even if the episode is not up to par. However, “Printer’s Devil” is a very solid episode and much of that is due to the great performance of Meredith as Mr. Smith, the Devil.

“Take away a man’s dream, fill him with whiskey and despair, send him to a lonely bridge, let him stand there all by himself looking down at the black water, and try to imagine the thoughts that are in his mind. You can’t, I can’t. But there’s someone who can—and that someone is seated next to Douglas Winter right now. The car is headed back toward town, but its real destination is the Twilight Zone”

Douglas Winter was ready to kill himself because his newspaper was faltering. However, he is intercepted by Mr. Smith, who talks him back to the world and begins to manipulate him.

We learn early that Mr. Smith is not necessarily in it for the benefit of Doug and that he had some specific power (lighting his own cigar with his finger is fairly strong hint). The story, itself, was one that is fairly well-used over the years as the Devil brings success to the person and eventual tries to get the person to sell his soul.

Burgess Meredith brought a lot of character to the Devil with the mannerisms he gave him and the way he presented his dialogue and his facial expressions. Meredith was excellent in this episode.

I did like the ending. It was one that I thought about during the story and I was pleased to see that they had gone that way. Some might think that it was too anticlimactic or that it wrapped everything up to neatly, but I liked it anyway.

July 6, 2023-number 110

Spoilers

“Minatures”

We have come to another episode of The Twilight Zone that I remember watching as a younger person. I did not remember much about the episode, but I did remember the imagery of the man talking to the dolls in the dollhouse.

It was Robert Duvall playing Charley Parkes, a sad and isolated man who did not have a lot of social skills and who struggled with human interactions. He was a man who found the interaction he needed inside a dollhouse at a museau,

“To the average person, a museum is a place of knowledge, a place of beauty and truth and wonder. Some people come to study, others to contemplate, others to look for the sheer joy of looking. Charley Parkes has his own reasons. He comes to the museum to get away from the world. It isn’t really the sixty-cent cafeteria meal that has drawn him here every day, it’s the fact that here in these strange, cool halls he can be alone for a little while, really and truly alone. Anyway, that’s how it was before he got lost and wandered into the Twilight Zone.“

Robert Duvall does a wonderful job portraying this character. Without that subtle and compelling performance, this episode does not work at all.

Charley’s family, including his mother, try to help Charley with his shyness and withdrawn behavior by setting him up on a date and encouraging him to get a job. Charley had been let go of his most recent job because he did not fit in and it was implied that this had happened before.

Charley becomes obsessed with the wooden doll in the miniature dollhouse and spent all his time sitting and talking to it. More things begin to happen as another doll arrives and tries to push himself on the woman doll. This led to Charley breaking the glass on the case to try and stop him and ends up with Charley committed to a mental hospital.

Charley plays his doctor, convincing him that he was all better and that he realized that the doll was not real. Charley sneaked out from his mother’s apartment and went back to the museum. The doctor and Charley’s family went to the museum to confront him, but they never found him. Well, a security guard did see Charley…

“They never found Charley Parkes, because the guard didn’t tell them what he saw in the glass case. He knew what they’d say and he knew they’d be right too, because seeing is not always believing, especially if what you see happens to be an odd corner of the Twilight Zone“

Charley wound up in the dollhouse with the wooden doll, escaping the world he was uncomfortable in for one of fantasy where he was comfortable.

It is a great twist at the end and a good end to the story. We would probably place a character like Charley on the Autism Spectrum in today’s world and Duvall’s portrayal is top tier. Maybe the messaging of the episode is a bit off- you can escape your troubles by diving into your own fantasy, but there is no denying that this is a well acted and engaging tale.

July 5, 2023-number 109

Spoilers

“Jess-Belle”

Witches arrive in the Twilight Zone.

This one was my least favorite episode of season four so far. This is the first episode in season four that was hampered by the longer time of the episode.

The story bounced back and forth with Jess-Belle. At one point, she felt antagonistic. Another point she felt like our protagonist. Were we supposed to be cheering for her? Was she a villain in the episode? I believe she was both depending on what the show needed to happen, which is pretty poor writing.

Then, I nearly laughed when we see Jess-Belle turn into a leopard as a curse for her love potion she ‘bought’ from Witchy-poo. That was so ridiculous and, once that happened, I was fully off the train for this episode.

To be fair, I thought James Best (aka Roscoe P. Coltrane) did a pretty decent job as the love-blinded man. The acting of the episode was solid over all.

Another thing that I hated of this episode was the song that was used when the show came back from commercial breaks. It felt like it was a minstrel folk song that, once again, I found laughable.

This was a very disappointing episodes for me.

July 4, 2023-number 108

Spoilers

“Death Ship”

Jack Klugman has been in some excellent episodes of The Twilight Zone so far in the Daily Zone. So far we have seen the former Odd Couple star in “A Passage for Trumpet,” and “A Game of Pool.” He returns in this episode, “Death Ship” which is an eerie and moody sci-fi installment that keeps the audience guessing as much as it does the characters.

“Picture of the spaceship E-89, cruising above the 13th planet of star system 51, the year 1997. In a little while, supposedly, the ship will be landed and specimens taken: vegetable, mineral, and if any, animal. These will be brought back to overpopulated Earth, where technicians will evaluate them, and if everything is satisfactory, stamp their findings with the word ‘inhabitable’ and open up yet another planet for colonization. These are the things that are supposed to happen.

Picture of the crew of the spaceship E-89: Captain Ross, Lieutenant Mason, Lieutenant Carter. Three men who have just reached a place which is as far from home as they will ever be. Three men who in a matter of minutes will be plunged into the darkest nightmare reaches of the Twilight Zone.”

This is a great set up, with the crew of E-89 finding another ship, crashed on the planet that they had landed. Upon investigation, they find three crew members dead, three crew members who are duplicates of thmeselves.

What a cool concept, and filled with potential solutions that keep the audience guessing as much as the characters.

Captain Ross’s denials of what is right in front of him can be irritating, but he seems to be wanting to fight for his own life. The other two, Mason and Carter, are much more shocked and react to the situation in surprising ways.

We discover that this crash has already happened and that they were dead, but Ross is determined to find another answer. The episode seems to imply that because of Ross’s refusal to accept the idea that they are already dead, the three members of E-89 were destined to repeat the events over and over again, never able to come to their final rest.

Mason and Carter get flashes to their afterlife, seeing others who had passed on in what was played as hallucinations. The episode does a solid job of teasing what was going on until the final reveal at the end.

“Picture of a man who will not see anything he does not choose to see, including his own death. A man of such indomitable will that even the two men beneath his command are not allowed to see the truth; which truth is, that they are no longer among the living, that the movements they make and the words they speak have all been made and spoken countless times before, and will be made and spoken countless times again, perhaps even unto eternity. Picture of a latter-day Flying Dutchman, sailing into the Twilight Zone.”

July 3, 2023- numbers 106, 107

Spoilers

“He’s Alive”

The beginning of this episode felt like a Ron DeSantis speech.

“Portrait of a bush-league Führer named Peter Vollmer, a sparse little man who feeds off his self-delusions and finds himself perpetually hungry for want of greatness in his diet. And like some goose-stepping predecessors he searches for something to explain his hunger, and to rationalize why a world passes him by without saluting. That something he looks for and finds is in a sewer. In his own twisted and distorted lexicon he calls it faith, strength, truth. But in just a moment Peter Vollmer will ply his trade on another kind of corner, a strange intersection in a shadowland called the Twilight Zone.”

I found this episode very compelling and, at times, powerful. I do like that we get more of the character of Peter Vollmer than just another Führer wannabe. However, I do wonder why he chose this path. Especially since he apparently was raised by Ernst, the older Jewish man. I understand that they implied that Peter was weak and picked upon as a child by his father, but to take his trauma and turn it towards the minorities did not make much sense.

I loved the presentation of Curt Conway as the ghost of Adolf Hitler. Although it did feel fairly obvious where that was going, keeping him in the shadows as he manipulated Peter was very well done. I also thought the ending where Hitler’s shadow is all we see moving through the alley as Rod Serling spoke his ending narration was very effective of an image.

“Where will he go next, this phantom from another time, this resurrected ghost of a previous nightmare – Chicago? Los Angeles? Miami, Florida? Vincennes, Indiana? Syracuse, New York? Anyplace, everyplace, where there’s hate, where there’s prejudice, where there’s bigotry. He’s alive. He’s alive so long as these evils exist. Remember that when he comes to your town. Remember it when you hear his voice speaking out through others. Remember it when you hear a name called, a minority attacked, any blind, unreasoning assault on a people or any human being. He’s alive because through these things we keep him alive.”

This feels very relevant in today’s world and I wish the insanity of hatred would be recognized by people who feel the need to spread it around. I think a few little tweaks and this could have been one of the very top level episodes of The Twilight Zone.

“Mute”

A group of people decide that they would begin to teach their children to communicate telepathically instead of verbally. So what happens when a family following this decision dies, leaving behind their sole surviving daughter?

“What you’re witnessing is the curtain-raiser to a most extraordinary play; to wit, the signing of a pact, the commencement of a project. The play itself will be performed almost entirely offstage. The final scenes are to be enacted a decade hence and with a different cast. The main character of these final scenes is Ilse, the daughter of Professor and Mrs. Nielsen, age two. At the moment she lies sleeping in her crib, unaware of the singular drama in which she is to be involved. Ten years from this moment, Ilse Nielsen is to know the desolating terror of living simultaneously in the world and in the Twilight Zone.”

Mute has some interesting ideas, but there are too many plot details that play in opposition to the ideas of the story.

Ilse was the little girl who found her way into the home of the sheriff and his wife. They did not know who to contact so they kept Ilse while they tried to figure out what to do.

The episode wanted there to be a close mother/daughter relationship forming between Ilse and Cora, the sheriff’s wife, but it is undercut by several things. First, we learn that Cora had a daughter who had drown, and it seemed as if she was using Ilse to replace that daughter. This is not a very healthy start to the relationship. Then when Cora was burning letters that were to be sent to friends of Ilse‘s parents, who lived in Europe, she was clearly doing what she wanted, not what was best for Ilse.

Another thing that I did not like in the plot of this episode was the inclusion of this teacher who was determined to make Ilse talk and would bring her up to the front of the room and try and get her to say her name. The teacher had a background with her own parents trying to get her to become a “medium” as she stated, but that plotline was never brought back or wrapped up.

I also did not understand the ending of the episode where Ilse finally spoke her name and we learn that she is better off with the sheriff and Cora because her parents only saw her as an experiment. This ending did not feel like it worked with the story they were trying to tell.

Mute did not work well for me and the storytelling felt confused with what it was trying to say.