Tag: Twilight Zone

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 35 – I Sing the Body Electric

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Mr. Rogers is a recently widowed man with three lonely young children, Tom, Anne and Karen.  The children’s aunt tells Rogers that they need a mother not a babysitter but he doesn’t have an answer for that.  Tom shows his father an advertisement in a science magazine that announces robot grandmothers.  The family goes to the factory and learn that they can design a grandmother to look and sound exactly as they want her.  All are excited by the idea except for Anne who is angry at her mother for abandoning her (by dying).  Their electronic grandma proves to be lovable, wise and fun.  Everybody in the house is charmed by her except Anne who runs angrily out the door to escape.

When Grandma catches up to Anne, she tells her that she doesn’t want to have anyone else leave her.  Grandma tells Anne that she’ll never leave but the girl doesn’t believe her and runs into the street.  A speeding truck is on a collision course for Anne when Grandma shoves her out of the way and is struck instead.  Mr. Rogers is there to carry his daughter out of the street where she cries hysterically.  The truck driver is panicked when he sees Grandma sprawled in front of his truck but suddenly her programming resets and she gets up none the worse for her collision.

When Anne sees that her Grandma is indestructible a great fear leaves her and she embraces the robot.  Then we see the life of the children and their robot grandma and all the happiness she shares with them.  When finally, all three children have reached college age Grandma tells them she is returning to the factory to receive a new assignment or maybe e disassembled for parts.  She tells them that at some point she would be in a room with the other grandmas sharing wisdom.  And finally, she said that maybe in a few hundred years of service she would be granted the dream of becoming really alive.  Then the children tell her that she already is really alive now.  Then she tells them to go upstairs so she can leave without any sad goodbyes.

Serling got Ray Bradbury to adapt his short story for television.  But both versions are very strange.  It is a very original concept but it’s odd.  For originality I’ll give it a B+ but it won’t click for all tastes.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 34 – Young Man’s Fancy

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Alex Walker has just returned home with his new bride Virginia and before they take off on their honeymoon, they are preparing to have a realtor sell the old place.  But the more Alex looks at every old memento of his life with his deceased mother the less he likes the idea of leaving it.  Finally, he tells the realtor that he will have to think about the sale after he gets back from his honeymoon.  All this upsets Virginia terribly and we find out that she has waited for years for her deceased mother in law to die so that Alex would be willing to get married.  Now he walks around the house talking obsessively about his childhood life with his mother, about the songs she liked, the fudge she would make for them to snack on and how she took care of him after his father abandoned them.  Finally, he tells her that he will not sell the house but that they will live in it instead.

Virginia is so upset by this that she goes to get her things and leave.  But as she passes through the house, she notes that everything is changing into the version that had been there twenty-five years earlier; the telephone, stove and ice box.  Then suddenly she sees Alex’s mother standing on the staircase and Virginia tells her that she can’t have Alex, that he is a grown man and she hasn’t the right to keep him for herself.  But the mother says it isn’t her doing.  And from behind her a 10-year-old Alex appears and tells Virginia that they don’t need her and for her to go.  Virginia leaves.

Yikes!  This is a very creepy episode.  It reminds me of Psycho except without the murder and transvestitism.  Although I am quite repelled by the tele-play, I guess I’ll say it’s effective and probably quite original for the time.  Despite my reluctance I’m forced to give it a B-.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 33 – The Dummy

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Robots, mannequins and ventriloquist’s dummies.  Saints preserve us.

Cliff Robertson is Jerry Etherson, a ventriloquist and Willie is his dummy.  But Jerry’s problem is that sometimes Willie wants to do the talking.  And because of this Jerry has become an alcoholic.  Obviously, nobody believes him including his manager Frank (played by Frank Sutton of Gomer Pyle semi-fame).  Frank warns him that if he doesn’t conquer his drinking problem the delusion about Willie will persist.  Jerry tells Frank that the truth about Willie is what is driving him to drink.

Jerry thinks he has figured a way out.  He switches the act away from Willie by using his other dummy Goofy Goggles.  When Frank asks him why he is leaving early Jerry says he’s leaving for Miami and he’s leaving Willie behind in a locked steamer trunk.  Hearing that Jerry is running out on an engagement Frank ends his association with Jerry and tells him he needs a psychiatrist to solve his dummy delusion.

But when Jerry tries to leave the club, he can still hear Willie taunting him and telling him he won’t be able to get rid of Willie.  He rushes back to the darkened dressing room; rips open the trunk and smashes the mannequin down onto the floor.  But when he opens the light, he sees that he has destroyed Goofy Goggles.  And Willie is sitting on the couch mocking him.  When Jerry implores Willie to explain how a wooden dummy can live, Willie tells him that he did it by putting words into him.  Jerry bows his head in defeat and Willie laughs at him maniacally.

In the next scene we’re in a theater and the master of ceremonies introduces Willie and Jerry and from behind their backs we see the ventriloquist and his dummy going through their patter.  But as the position of the camera turns, we see that the ventriloquist is a living version of Willie and the dummy looks just like Jerry.

I suspect that Rod Serling was an actual time traveling sadist.  He had gone into the future and knew that I existed and if he would only create Twilight Zone episodes about robots, mannequins and ventriloquist dummies that can talk I would suffer horribly.  He must have been a monster.

And what about Cliff Robertson?  He was a reasonably successful and respected actor for what that’s worth.  And yet here he is wrestling with a dummy and being bested in a battle of wits.  I suppose there is a place for talking ventriloquist’s dummies in this wide wonderful world.  But what am I going to do in season five when I reach the second talking ventriloquist dummy story?  Am I supposed to pretend that’s alright too?  Besides this was the inspiration of the Chucky movies and who knows what future dummy abominations.  No, this will not stand.  D+

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 32 – The Gift

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In Madeiro, Mexico two policemen are sent to investigate a UFO.  When one of them comes across a fleeing alien they have a firefight and the policeman is killed.  His partner fires at the alien and wounds him.  When the policeman returns with his partner’s body, he warns the town that a dangerous creature is on the loose and telegraphs a message for the Army to come to Madeiro.

At this point a man that seems to be an American shows up in the cantina and asks for a drink.  He passes out and is discovered to be bleeding from gunshot wounds.  The town doctor removes the bullets and finds that this man (who calls himself Williams) very quickly recovers from what should have been fatal wounds.  Williams more or less admits to being the alien and claims that the police officer forced him to kill him.

A boy named Pedro who cleans the cantina befriends the alien and in return for this Williams gives Pedro a box which he tells him is a gift that Pedro should show to the doctor.  At this point, the Mexican Army shows up and a platoon of riflemen corner Williams.  When Pedro tells the crowd that Williams has given him a present, they grab it from him and burn it declaring that it is the work of the devil.  As Pedro and Williams walk toward each other, a woman yells out that the alien is going to harm Pedro and the soldiers all open fire on Williams, killing him.  When the doctor reads what is left of the gift it says “The following chemical formula is a vaccine, a vaccine against all forms of cancer.”  But that is all that is left.  The doctor says, “We have not just killed a man; we have killed a dream.”

First off, I’m really proud of Rod Serling for allowing someone other than Americans to be trigger happy xenophobes.  It’s sort of an achievement for Mexicans to be allowed to be the bad guys in a Twilight Zone.  It’s an acknowledgement of first world status to be responsible for oppressing somebody else.

Now, as to the dramatic quality of this episode, I’ve got some thoughts.  First off, Williams is something of an anglophile.  He can quote Robert Burns in the Scottish dialect.  I assume this is rare in space aliens.  Also, the panicked crowd of villagers were, shall we say, a little too excited.  After all the monster more or less looked and sounded like a guy from Cleveland.  And finally, why is it always cancer?  For once can’t it be high cholesterol or male pattern baldness?

Anyway, it was a little thin and there were a few too many stereotypes.  C+.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 31 – The Trade-Ins

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John and Marie Holt are an elderly couple and John has a medical condition that causes extreme and chronic pain.  In this future, medical science has advanced to the point that replacement bodies are commercially available for the price of $5,000.  The couple are interviewed by the salesman and he walks them through the displays of attractive young bodies that are available.  And he explains their satisfaction guarantee.  Within the first week if the patient changes his mind his old body is returned.

But when the Holts explain that they only have $5,000 the salesman apologetically informs them that government regulations forbid anything but a cash in advance payment.  Marie tells John to have the procedure done for him first and she will wait.  But John refuses saying that it will be all or none.  The Holts leave greatly disappointed.

John finds a shady high stakes poker game and goes into it with his $5,000.  He loses most of his money and in the last hand he can play the dealer asks him why he is risking his money in a game he obviously has no skill at.  He tells him his story.  Feeling pity for John he lets him win back his $5,000 and leave with what he started.

Suffering badly from his condition John relents and agrees to have his procedure first and earn the money afterward for Marie’s new body.  When John returns after his operation he is elated by his health and youth and exults to Marie about all the things they will do.  Every week an anniversary and every night a honeymoon.  And at first Marie shares his joy but then when she embraces him and realizes how old she will be compared to this youth she is shocked and filled with despair.

But John sees the look in her eyes and immediately goes back to the medical facility and has the procedure reversed.  He tells Marie if the price of being with her is pain then so be it.  John and Marie leave the building together with their love intact and their understanding of life deepened.

Joseph Schildkraut plays John and he is a favorite of mine for the comical villain he played in “The Shop Around the Corner.”  This Serling written story is a terribly sentimental drama.  Rod has shamelessly tugged on our heart strings with this story.  But I must confess I enjoyed it anyway.  B+.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 30 – Hocus-Pocus and Frisby

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Now this is more like it.  After those last two clunkers I was wondering if Season Three was all done.  But this will do.

Frisby (played by the unique Andy Devine) is a general store owner somewhere in the southwest named Frisby.  He is a spinner of tall tales and a terrible braggart.  According to him he has invented just about everything and has studied almost every field of science and engineering.  The customers of his establishment (one of whom is played by Howard McNear who was Floyd the Barber on the Andy Griffith Show) tolerate his lies because while he is pontificating, they are able to steal small pieces of candy behind his back.  We are subjected to an almost constant barrage of these tall tales in the first scene of the show.  Then a car pulls up to Frisby’s gas pump and while he fills their tank and regales them with the story of how he invented the rear mounted engine in their car the two men identify him as the man they are looking for.

Later on, as Frisby is closing his store he hears voices in the dark telling him to walk down the road to embark on a great adventure.  When he timidly refuses, he is levitated into the air and toward the destination that he was invited to.  On the desert floor we see a flying saucer (of course the one from Forbidden Planet) and the same voice invites him to enter.  Once inside, we see the two men from the car we saw earlier surrounded by other crew members.  They tell Frisby that they are aliens come to Earth to select a superior specimen for their menagerie.  After hearing of all his exploits and accomplishments they assume he is one of the most remarkable humans alive.  Frisby tells them that all the stories are lies.  But they do not understand the concept.  His lies have finally caught up with him.

When Frisby tries to leave they block his way.  When he resists and punches one of them in the face, the face cracks and is seen to be a mask hiding a strange non-human visage.  Seeing this Frisby faints.  When he comes to, the unmasked alien talks to him and declares that they will be leaving Earth momentarily.  To console himself Frisby begins playing his harmonica.  But the music has a toxic effect on the aliens and as they stagger back from the sound Frisby dashes for the door which they gladly open to allow his exit.  The saucer takes off to allow their escape from the “Death Sound” of Frisby’s instrument and he heads back to his store.  When he gets there the customers are throwing a birthday party for him.  He tries to tell them of his adventure but they laugh it off as just one of his wilder stories.

It doesn’t get much goofier than this one.  But it’s a great farce. A-

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 29 – Four O’Clock

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Oliver Crangle lives alone in a cramped cluttered dark apartment and has a parrot that periodically squawks out the word nut. He is near-sighted almost to the point of blindness from obsessively documenting all his enemies and spends his day “investigating” people that he reads about in the paper or sees on television or meets in the street.  He categorizes everyone and any that he deems evil, he harasses and attacks.  If he thinks that the clerk in the post office is a communist then he’ll call up his boss and report him.  If he reads about an accident victim that died in a hospital, he’ll find out who the attending physician was and report him to the hospital as negligent.

The wife of the doctor who he has attempted to vilify comes to Crangle’s apartment to find out why he is doing it.  When Crangle asks whether the hospital is ready to discharge her husband she tells him that the hospital doesn’t believe the charge.  But she says her husband is a sensitive man and the abuse is wounding him.  But Crangle has no sympathy.

Later an FBI agent shows up and interviews Crangle about a complaint he has sent to the bureau about communist infiltration.  While talking to the agent Crangle reveals his new plan.  Crangle says that by using only his will he will turn all the evil people in the world into two-foot-tall midgets at exactly four o’clock pm.  The agent tells Crangle to seek psychiatric help.  Crangle reviles the agent and tells him that he too will be one of the midgets.

At four o’clock Crangle is reduced to two feet in height.

The previous episode, The Little People, and this present one are about height.  But I guess that’s a metaphor for moral stature.  This is a character study about a 1960s version of a social justice warrior.  I wonder what Rod would think of how his side in the culture war has mutated into the thing he hated.  Interesting inversion.  The episode is a little thin for my tastes.  Your mileage may vary.   C.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 28 – The Little People

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Captain William Fletcher (played by Claude Akins) lands his space ship on an asteroid (of course) to repair damage done by a meteor shower.  His copilot Peter Craig bellyaches about the inconvenience of being stuck on a boring speck of dust and about having to obey Fletcher’s orders.  When Fletcher asks him why he’s so allergic to taking orders Craig confesses that what he wants more than anything else is to be the big boss.

While Fletcher is busy repairing the ship, Craig goes out exploring the asteroid.  He discovers water but what is astonishing is that he discovers a civilization of tiny people smaller than ants.  They have towns and automobiles and boats.  And what makes Craig really happy is that he has become their leader and in fact their god.  Because he can destroy anything in their world just by stepping on it the little people fear him and will obey any order, he gives them.

The next day Fletcher discovers that the little people have built a life size statue of Peter Craig.  Craig had ordered them to build it and complete it in one night.  But when Craig starts stepping on some of the little people’s town, just to keep them afraid and show who’s boss, Fletcher knocks Craig down and berates him for behaving like a sadist.

Later on, Fletcher tells Craig that he’s repaired the ship and now it’s time to leave.  Craig refuses to leave and when Fletcher attempts to force him to go Craig pulls out a blaster and threatens Fletcher with it.  In fact, he blows the head off of his statue to show he means business.  Craig intends to stay on the asteroid and spend his days as the deity of the little people and their curse.  Craig gives Fletcher an ultimatum, leave or die.  So, Fletcher blasts off in the rocket and Craig laughs as the ship ascends into the sky.  But later a space ship lands and two giants as tall as mountains happen upon Petr Craig and one accidentally crushes him to death while trying to pick him up.  The giants are saddened by the accidental death they’ve caused but they drop Peter back on the ground near the little people’s settlement as they leave.

Later we see that the little people use ropes to tip over the statue on top of the corpse of their former god.

What can I say?  Claude Akins is an amusing character actor but there’s not much to work with here.  It’s sort of a riff on Gulliver’s Travels and the bad guy gets his comeuppance, I guess.  C+ is the best I can do.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 27 – Person or Persons Unknown

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Richard Long plays David Gurney a married man waking up with a hangover after a very late night out with his wife Wilma.  As he staggers around his bedroom trying to shake off his hangover he berates his sleeping wife for not even removing his shoes before letting him fall asleep the night before.  Getting ready for work, he is sore at his wife because she can sleep late so he slaps her on the butt to wake her up.  She wakes up but then becomes noticeably upset claiming Gurney is a stranger to her and threatening to call the police if he doesn’t leave her bedroom immediately.  David decides it’s some sort of joke cooked up between his wife and one of his friends at work.  After a few sarcastic words with Wilma he heads out of the house and drives to his job at the bank in his car.

When he gets to work nobody greets him and everyone acts as if they don’t know him.  When he sees someone sitting at his desk he gets angry and tells the occupant to leave.  The bank guard comes over and Gurney gets into an altercation with him.  The guard pulls his gun out and forces David out onto the sidewalk.  There waiting for them are a few policemen and Wilma.  David attempts to convince them that he is who he claims to be but they arrest him and take him in the patrol car.

In the next scene David is in the office of a psychiatrist who tries to convince him that he has built up an imaginary persona under the influence of a mental illness. To convince David of this the psychiatrist calls up the telephone numbers of the friends and family who David says will know him.  All of them, including his mother deny the very existence of David Gurney.  Desperate to prove his existence David dives through the office window and escapes in a stolen truck.  Going to his favorite bar he tries to get his friend the bartender to recognize him but with no success.  Finally, he goes to a photographer’s store and asks for the photos that he had taken with Wilma.  Looking in the envelope he sees a photograph of himself with his arm around Wilma.  Just as he’s leaving the store, the police and the psychiatrist intercept him.  David triumphantly tells the psychiatrist that he’s found proof of his own existence but when the psychiatrist looks in the envelope the picture only contains David.  Now David breaks down and starts wailing that he does exist.

The scene shifts to David back in his bedroom crying out in his sleep.  Wilma wakes up and tries to reassure him that he’s only having a bad dream.  David is overjoyed to wake from the bad dream to find that his wife knows him.  He wants to kiss her but she tells him to wait until she takes off her cold cream and her hair turban.  But when she returns from the bathroom Wilma is now a blonde instead of a brunette and even though she knows David he is seeing a woman different from the wife he married.  Dant, dant, Dahhhh!

To start off I’d like to express the opinion that Wilma #2 is significantly better looking than Wilma #1 so all things considered this hardly seems like a nightmare ending he’s left in.  Secondly this episode is a “man screaming at his surroundings” episode which I have often condemned on aesthetic grounds.  But I must confess that a number of details in the episode amused me.  First off, I found his hectoring of his sleeping wife and then slapping her on the butt very naturalistic. I always enjoy the portrayal of the war between the sexes as long as the playing field isn’t tilted against the husband as it so often is.  Secondly Richard Long is a decent actor and he made the character personable and sympathetic.  And finally, the psychiatrist was not as ingratiating and condescending as so many characters in that persona typically are portrayed.  Let’s give it a B-.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 26 – Little Girl Lost

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Chris and Ruth Miller wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of their six-year-old daughter Tina crying for them.  Chris puts on his slippers and goes into Tina’s room but she’s not in her bed.  He calls to her and she answers him but he can’t see her.  Thinking that she’s rolled off and under the bed he looks underneath but she’s not there.  Ruth comes into the room and turns on the light.  Now they see she’s not in the room but they can still hear Tina crying out for them and now her voice seems to be coming from different places in the house.  Chris says he’s going to check under the house but as he opens the kitchen door the little family dog Mack runs inside and runs past Ruth and under the bed.  But Mack disappears too and only his bark indicates that he’s still nearby.

Chris rushes back in the room and after catching up with what happened from Ruth, he tells her that Tina isn’t under the house and he is going to call for help.  He calls his friend Bill and tells him to hurry over.  Ruth wants to know what Bill can do.  Chris tells her that Bill is a physicist and maybe he can explain what is happening.

When Bill arrives, he listens to the story from the couple and then with Chris’s help he moves the bed out of the way.  After some trial and error poking at the floor and wall behind the bed he finds a door sized area of the wall that, though it appears solid, allows his hand to pass through it.  Borrowing a piece of chalk from Ruth he draws an arch around where the portal to another dimension seems to have opened.

Bill tells the Millers that the portal is an opening between our three-dimensional universe and a higher dimensioned space that temporarily are juxtaposed next to each other.  Bill asks why he can’t just go in and get Tina and Bill says that the other dimension may not be normal enough for human sight to navigate it successfully.  He suggests that they call to Tina and tell her to hold onto Mack and follow him back out when they call the dog.  Apparently, the sharper senses of the dog would be a more reliable conduit for escape back into our world.

Tina does indeed see Mack and she begins to follow their instructions but while Chris is coaxing her to follow the dog, he falls into the portal and now is standing in the strange murky and confusing space inside the wall.  With much back and forth talk between Chris and Tina she slowly follows Mack back to where Chris is waiting.  Meanwhile Bill is imploring Chris to hurry the process as much as possible.  Finally, Chris has Tina by the hand and all at once the two people and the dog come tumbling out onto the floor of Tina’s bedroom.  Ruth grabs Tina and takes her out of the room for safety.  Bill stands talking to Chris about the escape.  Chris asks Bill how he was able to see him to pull him out of the portal.  Bill explains that Chris was never fully in the portal.  His back was still in the room.  And now Bill slaps his hand on the wall where the portal used to be.  It was shut.  Bill told him that it was closing all the time he was half in and half out of it.  Another few seconds and he would have been cut in half by its closing.

This is a weird one.  The dramatic effect of the episode is marred by a few problems.  The voice of Tina is actually noticeably that of a grown woman affecting a childish sound.  I found it quite annoying.  And the scene in the other dimension where Chris is calling to Tina and each can’t see the other but keep calling back and forth is also kind of monotonous and annoying.  I get that they were trying to build suspense and excitement but I thought it was overly long and not very effective visually.  And the fact that Chris would call a physicist to handle a missing child is kind of “Ghostbusteresque.”

But the use of the dimensional portal as a plot element in the conventional setting of a normal American household is original and interesting.  Well, at least original for TV.  After all, I remember Heinlein had that story “And He Built a Crooked House.”  Either way it’s an interesting story concept.  Despite the less than brilliant dramatic elements I’m giving this a B+.