Midnight Movie of the Week #183 - Twilight Zone: The Movie

During a recent viewing of Twilight Zone: The Movie I came to the realization that my biggest problem with this movie is that it's not the original Twilight Zone. And while this compilation of four mysterious tales doesn't exactly fit with the series that preceded it - there are a few issues we'll get to as we discuss this compilation - there's an incredible charm to this loving tribute to Rod Serling's TV classic.

A dream team of Hollywood directors came together to lead each segment of this anthology, setting the expectations for the film unreasonably high for many viewers. The producers, each of whom directed a segment, are no less than John Landis and Steven Spielberg, who team up with Joe Dante and George Miller for the film. Three of the directors worked up remakes of classic Zone episodes, while Landis wrote his own prologue and initial segment to get the film going. If you're familiar with these four directors you probably know that there are some differing styles at work here, which means they each bring something different to the table - and also means that the film has a little bit of a flow problem too.

Landis opens the film with a catchy, self-referential prologue featuring Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks as two men on a dark highway who sing some CCR and then start to discuss their favorite TV shows, including - you guessed it - The Twilight Zone. This leads to an abrupt surprise reveal that would be at home on the show (though it would need fleshed out a bit), and one of the film's most iconic moments. Landis then follows up with an ill-fated original story of a racist/bigoted man played by Vic Morrow who finds himself facing the injustices that those he opposes once faced. It's an idea that has a lot of power and some of the imagery of Nazis and Klansmen that Landis provides are incredible, but unfortunately things didn't work out for this story. In a tragic accident, Morrow and two child extras were killed in a helicopter crash due to a pyrotechnics error. Landis salvaged what he could with the film - and with his career, which was sidetracked severely by the ensuing lawsuits - but the end result is an abrupt story that leaves a bad aftertaste for obvious reasons.

The second episode is Spielberg's version of an old episode entitled Kick the Can.  Though Spielberg was one of the driving forces behind this movie, I've always felt that his segment - while good on its own - misses the mark as a throwback to the series. It's a fun story, in which a group of retirement home residents are reminded of their youth by the fantastic Scatman Crothers and the titular kids game, but it seems like Spielberg brought a little too much of his E.T. mojo over from that production. He retains only part of the original episode's twist, and lessens its blow considerably with a change in focus to Crothers' character.  The story is still well made - it's certainly the film's most polished piece - but it just doesn't feel like it belongs with the series with Spielberg's tone.

At this point you might be wondering why I'm bothering to even talk about this movie, but this is the part where business picks up. The final two segments, directed by Dante and Miller - both of whom were much lesser known than their cohorts at this time - both hit as good adaptations of two of Serling's show's best episodes. The late genius Roger Ebert famously noted this fact in a backhanded insult toward genre films, stating that "the two superstar directors are thoroughly routed by two less-known directors whose previous credits have been horror and action pictures" in his review of the film. I agree with his assessment of the film, at least.

The first is Dante's update of It's a Good Life, originally made famous when young Billy Mumy starred as a six-year old with unnatural control over his environment in the show's initial run. The plot is updated a bit here, introducing a teacher (Kathleen Quinlan) who is invited into the child's home and experiences his wrath. Dante, who would go on to direct cartoonish fare like Gremlins and even a Looney Tunes film, takes plenty of stylistic cues from violent childrens' cartoons, and hammy performances from the cast - including the always welcome Kevin McCarthy - add to the fun. The tone shift from the original series is noticeable, but it's not really problematic. Dante has a lot of fun with this story, little Jeremy Licht is good as the child (and Mumy cameos alongside Dick Miller in one scene), and the re-write around Quinlan's character is a nice supplement to the original episode. You could almost look at this one as a sequel to that episode, and it works either way you look at it.

George Miller brings up the tail end of the film as he directs the grand finale, a remake of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, which is one of the most famous episodes of the series.  This tale of a frightened airline passenger who sees a creature on the wing of the plane originally starred William Shatner in one of his early roles, and his shoes are filled admirably here by John Lithgow. The performance is wild, even in comparison to Shatner, but Lithgow's ability to show fear really pushes this segment to great heights. Miller was fresh off his first two Mad Max films when he directed this segment, and there's a little bit of the same chaotic energy running through this segment. Miller swoops the camera around the confined airplane and Lithgow frantically tries to survive at the same time, resulting in an unsettling sequence that still gives me the creeps. Is it better than the original episode? No, probably not. But it's a different vision and a very fun one at that.

When you take all of these parts and put them together into a 101 minute package, the results are admittedly mixed. But, if you took four random episodes of The Twilight Zone and packaged them together they might not flow as one entity either. That's part of the beauty of the series in which - despite some recurring themes - no two episodes are alike. If nothing else, Twilight Zone: The Movie manages to capture four different moods from The Twilight Zone, showing off both dark and sinister and light and playful themes in one package. On that alone, the final product is a tribute that seems to be endlessly watchable, filled to the brim with enough good ideas and excellent performances to make Zone fans like me smile.

The Mike's Guide to SyFy's Fourth of July Twilight Zone Marathon

If you're like me - read as: uncomfortable with crowds and human interaction and comfortable with awesome genre entertainment - there's about nothing you'll like more than when the SyFy Network offers up one of their Twilight Zone marathons on the New Years or Independence Day holidays.  It's got its flaws - the fact that they can only show 44 episodes in 22 hours is a big one, not to mention a few cuts to make room for modern commercial requirements - but there's simply no better escape from holiday madness for someone who loves twisted, dark entertainment.

But we can't all be full hermits, and most of us can't sit in front of a TV screen from 8 AM EST through 6 AM EST the next day, which means there's some picking and choosing that you might have to do when it comes to. (I suppose you could avoid picking and choosing if you have one of those fancy future DVR machines that holds a lot of stuff, but I'm a VCR boy and I don't understand that kind of talk.) My point is that you might have to pick out the best of what this marathon has to offer so you can keep your family/friends/waist line happy. And I'm here to help with that.

Below is a quick rundown of the episodes that stand out to me from tomorrow's marathon. I'm still working through the whole series to catch episodes I've missed/forgotten over the years, so this is by no means the definitive answer to this marathon - I encourage you to check out the full lineup, which I'll post at the bottom of this post, and check out the descriptions of the episodes you might like on your cable guide or somewhere like TVGuide.com.  Additionally, I've linked each title to the episode's IMDB page for your convenience.

Here's what I'm recommending/watching out for:

• The daytime lineup features a lot of episodes that I'm not familiar with yet or don't remember well. I'm looking forward to catching a few new (to me) episodes, but there's a couple I dig

9:30 AM EST - People Are Alike All Over - Roddy McDowell of Planet of the Apes and Fright Night fame stars as one of the first Earthlings on Mars, who is given a warm welcome by the planet's humanoid inhabitants. Underrated episode that's worth it for the actor's performance and a stinging ending.

12:30 PM EST - Stopover in a Quiet Town - The ending of this one might not work for everyone, but it's one of The Zone's best "where is everybody?" episodes. A married couple finds themselves in a seemingly deserted town and things are - as always when Serling's the host - not what they seem.

1:30 PM EST - I Sing The Body Electric - This tale of a robot grandmother and the children she takes care of is most notable for being the only Twilight Zone episode written by the late, great Ray Bradbury.

2:00 PM EST - Five Characters in Search of an Exit - A clown, a ballerina, a soldier, a hobo, and a bagpiper wake up in an inescapable room with no memories and only the sky above as a clue that might explain their predicament. One of my favorite episodes, but another with an ending that's a little farther outside the box than some might like.

2:30 PM EST - Nick of Time - I actually haven't seen this one, about another couple stopping in a small town and finding trouble, but I'll be checking it out for two reasons: it's written by Richard Matheson, and it stars William Shatner. If you think that sounds like an awesome combination, check back in at 9:30.

3:00 PM EST - Kick the Can - Also haven't seen this one, but I'm so excited that it's getting shown here. This is the episode that was updated by Steven Spielberg for 1983's Twilight Zone: The Movie, in which an optimistic old man tries to convince other seniors that age can be conquered. Really curious to see how this one originally played out.

4:00 PM EST - It's a Good Life - Also updated for Twilight Zone: The Movie, this tale of a boy who holds his family captive with his overactive imagination is a one of a kind winner.

5:30 PM EST - The Invaders - Another classic via Matheson, in which an old woman goes to war with tiny aliens that land on her roof. If it sounds too good to be true - trust me, it's not. It's great.

• (By The Way - From 5:30 to 11:30 you might as well cancel all your plans, because this is when SyFy is bringing out some heavy hitters. Crack the window so you can see the fireworks, but keep your eyes glued to the following episodes if you haven't seen them.)

6:00 PM EST - The Masks - One of the only episodes to be directed by a woman - the great Ida Lupino - and one of the more serious and macabre episodes of the series. This is one you might want to check out on Hulu or Netflix, however, as the cuts for timing hurt a couple of the reveals here.

• (By The Way II: The Sequel - All of these episodes are available on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and even Hulu (for free via IMDB).  If you miss out - you can still see them and win! It's like Christmas and Independenc Day and The Twilight Zone Marathon mixed into one package!)

6:30 PM EST - Living Doll - Telly Savalas goes one on one with the infamous Talky Tina, an angry and murderous doll that won't shut up. It's creepy even if you know that Tina is voiced by June Foray, who is most famous for being Rocky the Flying Squirrel alongside Bullwinkle.

7:30 PM EST - Time Enough At Last - The second straight episode starring Burgess Meredith (The Obsolete Man runs at 7:00 PM) has what might be the whole series' single best gut-punching ending.

8:30 PM EST - Eye of the Beholder - One of the most infamous episodes, and it needs no introduction to TZ fans. The thing about this show is that it can so easily trick us by making us buy in to our own preconceptions of reality - and few episodes do that better than this one does.

9:00 PM EST - To Serve Man - The best alien episode of the series? Possibly. And, like most of these prime time episodes, one that packs a fantastic and iconic twist. Plus it features Richard "Jaws" Kiel as a Kanamit invader - and that's always welcome.

9:30 PM EST - Nightmare at 20,000 Feet - Shatner and Matheson return in another of the series' most popular tales. There's something on the wing of the plane!

10:00 PM EST - Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up? - I love love love love love that this episode is getting a prime spot in the marathon next to some of the greats. The story, in which the trail of an alien invader leads to a snowbound diner full of seemingly normal people, is one of the Zone's best combinations of paranoia and mystery.

10:30 PM EST - The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street - It's a paranoia double feature in the the 10 PM hour, as Rod Serling unleashes one of the more socially relevant episodes from the show's run. This chaotic episode is still relevant today, making it one of the show's biggest "must see" episodes.

11:00 PM EST - The Howling Man - This one is probably my favorite episode of The Twilight Zone. I've written about it before, but it still never seems to get old. One of the few Zone episodes that is directly about the battle between good and evil, and the results are perfectly over-the-top and nightmarish.

The early Friday lineup doesn't pack the same punch as that set of episodes does, but there are still some good episodes to be found and a few I'm hoping to catch up with. Here's what jumps out to me.

2:30 AM EST - Night Call - Directed by the legendary Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past, Cat People, Night of the Demon) and written by Matheson, this is certainly one of the most horror-based episodes of the series. An old woman (Gladys Cooper of Rebecca and other Hollywood classics) deals with a series of ominous phone calls late at night and becomes increasingly afraid for her life.

4:00 AM EST - Little Girl Lost - More Richard Matheson! This is the episode that should give any parent nightmares, in which a little girl vanishes from her room while her parents can still hear her scream.

4:30 AM EST - The After Hours - OK, I know it's the title - but I HATE how this one always seems to be buried in the late/early hours of the marathon. I actually just saw it for the first time during one of the marathons a couple of years ago, and instantly loved it. Forbidden Planet's Anne Francis stars...and there's also a bunch of mannequins. Prepare for creepy.

A few of my favorites didn't make the cut for this short marathon - try out Nothing in the Dark (Robert Redford!), Spur of the Moment, and Mirror Image if you need more - but it's not possible to show all the great episodes without showing almost all of the episodes. Check out the full rundown below and make your own viewing (or streaming) plans. In the meantime, hit up the comments and tell me which episodes you dig - I need to make sure I catch 'em all!

----------------------------------------------

(All times EST)
Thursday, July 4                                                             Friday, July 5
8am: “Walking Distance”                                                    12am: “The Midnight Sun”
8:30am: “The Shelter”                                                         12:30am: “The Bewitchin’ Pool”
9am: “The Old Man in the Cave”                                        1am: “The Dummy”
9:30am: “People Are Alike All Over”                                  1:30am: “Dead Man’s Shoes”
10am: “Probe 7, Over and Out”                                          2am: “Night of the Meek”
10:30am: “A Kind of a Stopwatch”                                     2:30am: “Night Call”
11am: “A Hundred Yards Over the Rim”                            3am: “A Penny For Your Thoughts”
11:30am: “A Game of Pool”                                               3:30am: “Long Distance Call”
12pm: “A Most Unusual Camera”                                      4am: “Little Girl Lost”
12:30pm: “Stopover in a Quiet Town”                                4:30am: “The After Hours”
1pm: “Number 12 Looks Just Like You”                           5am: “The Little People”
1:30pm: “I Sing the Body Electric”                                     5:30am: “Caesar and Me”
2pm: “Five Characters in Search of an Exit”
2:30pm: “Nick of Time”
3pm: “Kick the Can”
3:30pm: “Where Is Everybody?”
4pm: “It’s a Good Life”
4:30pm: “The Hitch-Hiker”
5pm: “Third From the Sun”
5:30pm: “The Invaders”
6pm: “The Masks”
6:30pm: “Living Doll”
7pm: “The Obsolete Man”
7:30pm: “Time Enough at Last”
8pm: “A Stop at Willoughby”
8:30pm: “The Eye of the Beholder”
9pm: “To Serve Man”
9:30pm: “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”
10pm: “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?”
10:30pm: “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”
11pm: “The Howling Man”
11:30pm: “The Odyssey of Flight 33″

Midnight in The Twilight Zone - An Independence Day Top 10

Might as well face it, I'm addicted to lists.  I KNOW.  But you know what? It's the 4th of July...and the SyFy Network, in a rare brilliant move, has been doing a Twilight Zone marathon all day.  THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT WE FOUGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE TO GAIN!!!!

In the midst of the awesomeness, a few fine Facebook finks started listing off their Top 10 favorite Twilight Zone episodes...and I wanted to too.  So, off the top of my head - and armed with the knowledge that I still haven't seen enough episodes of the best series ever - I came up with 10 favorites and ranked them and am now gonna share them here.  Let's rock.

(By the way, all of these episodes are on Netflix Instant Watch, and I've been told most of the series' eps are available on YouTube. Happy hunting!)

Number 10 - Dust (January 6, 1961; Season 2, Episode 12)

When I started my rarely revisited Midnight in The Twilight Zone series a while back, Dust was the first episode I covered.  It's never been recognized as one of the classics of the series, but I've always found it to be an interesting take on how we cope with death.  Were it not for a dose of fate late in the episode, this story of a Old West town on the day of a hanging wouldn't even make the TZ...but that's the beauty of some of Serling's best stories.

Number 9 - Time Enough At Last (November 20, 1959; Season 1, Episode 8)

Burgess Meredith, who appeared in plenty of Twilight Zone eps, gives his most memorable performance in this classic.  I think we can all relate to the character who really just wants time alone to enjoy their hobbies, and this episode reminds us that what we want isn't always what is best for us...or anyone else. 

Number 8 - Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up? (May 26, 1961; Season 2, Episode 28

Many of my favorite TZ episodes seem to have a common theme of people being pitted against each other and letting human nature take over.  Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up? gives us 9 characters in a diner...and then tells us one of them is a Martian.  The rest is up to them.  With one of the series' best twists, this is a pretty simple episode that keeps me grinning every time.

Number 7 - Eye of the Beholder (November 11, 1960; Season 2, Episode 6)

I gotta admit, at this point it's impossible for me to see this episode without starting to laugh about the Saturday Night Live spoof of it that featured Pamela Anderson.  But when judged on its own accord, this might be the series' most well put together episode from a visual standpoint.  I used to think the reveal came a little too early in this episode, but the extra discussion of the story's message adds to the impact on the viewer.

Number 6 - Mirror Image (February 26, 1960; Season 1, Episode 21)

Vera Miles is seeing double in this episode of The Zone, which I've always thought was a little more abstract than many of its counterparts.  While many of the series' sci-fi turns involved invaders or time travel, Mirror Image deals with something a little more relative, and leaves a lasting impression on the open mind.

Number 5 - The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street (March 4, 1960; Season 1, Episode 22)

When I was in high school, our Language Arts teacher would have us read these short plays in class and act them out in the 12 foot by 12 foot class room.  It was juvenile, but hey - so's high school.  Anyway, one of the plays was about a neighborhood in which the neighbors all decide a new person on the block is odd and get mobby and start throwing stones.  I don't remember the full story, all I really remember is that I played the neighbor who finally stood up at the embattled house and shouted "Throw the next stone at me neighbors, I live here too!"  I botched the line the first time, but (with prompting) I got an ovation on the second - and it was kinda a great moment that reminded me that standing against the crowd is often a good thing.  Seriously, it was one of the few moments in school that I actually remember teaching me something.  That teacher deserves a plaque or something.

Anyway, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street kinda covers a similar situation - but ponders what might happen if there's no one who will stand up and shout something sensible.  Perhaps the series' most thought provoking tale.

Number 4 - Spur of the Moment (February 21, 1964; Season 5, Episode 21)

A young woman is tormented by the haunting vision above in one of the best episodes of the latter seasons.  This shrieking woman might be the most haunting vision from the whole series to me, and the Richard Matheson penned episode is another great reminder of how our decisions can haunt us.

Number 3 - To Serve Man (March 2, 1962; Season 3, Episode 24)

Though it's only Number 3 on my list, this is probably the one episode I'd pick if I had to show someone who'd never seen the show what The Zone is all about.  It's got aliens, it's got the twist, it's got boatloads of narration.  It's also got Richard "Jaws" Kiel, which is an outlier, but is awesome.  Oh, and it's so good that it's still randomly getting mentioned in stuff like Madagascar.  That's just random, but it proves something.  To Serve Man = Classic.


Number 2 - Nothing in the Dark (January 5, 1962; Season 3, Episode 16)

This story of an old woman who's terrified of death and a young injured policeman (played by a young Robert Redford!) is probably the one Twilight Zone episode that completely threw me for a loop when I first saw it.  I'm not even sure what I was thinking the ending would be, but then it happened - and I was like Sixth Sense shocked.  Wasn't until I saw it a second time that I even caught the final discussion (which changed the tone of the episode completely), because I was too busy arguing how the heck they could do that. (Who was I arguing with, you ask? Myself.  I was arguing with myself. It tricked me THAT well.)

Number 1 - The Howling Man (November 4, 1960; Season 2, Episode 5)

It's one of the more out-of-place and uncharacteristic episodes of the series, but this cautionary tale about the evils in our world has my heart every time.  The three leads give such passionate performances that it's easy to get caught up, and the big reveal - which is followed by a sly final touch - is one of my favorite images in the world.  I've already written about this one once, but it bears repeating that this is one of my favorite horror stories ever.

Midnight in the Twilight Zone - Changing of the Guard

It's been well more than a year since FMWL spent a Midnight in the Twilight Zone. Not sure why I abandoned this feature, because I freakin' love The Twilight Zone.  It's like the best thing to ever happen to TV, except for maybe Sports Night.  Thankfully, a good friend of FMWL - Andre Dumas of The Horror Digest - got me thinkin' about The Zone again yesterday.  And, with the help of Instant Netflix, I decided to go out and find an episode of The Twilight Zone I hadn't seen before. Which brings us to the final episode of the series' third season: Changing of the Guard.

"Professor Ellis Fowler. A gentle, bookish, guide to the young. Who is about to discover that life still has certain surprises, and that the campus of the Rock Springs School for Boys lies in a direct path to another institution - commonly referred to as The Twilight Zone."

First of all, I will admit that the main reason I chose this episode was the fact that the lead is played by Donald Pleasence.  We don't talk about it enough, but Donald Pleasence is completely the most underrated genre icon of his era.  While the likes of Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing - all among the all-time greats - were showing up in Victorian horrors by Roger Corman or Hammer Films consistently, the 218(!) film and TV appearances of Pleasence seem to have been slightly overlooked by the cult film fanatic.  Well before his famous turn as Dr. Loomis in Halloween - a role he only got because Lee turned it down - Pleasence was appearing in sci-fi films (Fantastic Voyage, THX 1138), big budget action films (The Great Escape, You Only Live Twice), cult flicks (Roman Polanski's Cul-de-sac), and even a few horror films (former Midnight Movie of the Week pick Raw Meat).  Alas, Pleasence's name has rarely been recognized alongside those names - even though Price, Cushing, and Lee never made their way to The Twilight Zone.  I think it's about time we change that, don't you? This dude belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Awesomeness, I say.

In Changing of the Guard, Pleasence plays Professor Ellis Fowler, mentioned by Mr. Serling in the opening, a stodgy old teacher who finds himself forced into retirement days before Christmas.  The dejected professor, lost without his pulpit, begins to consider suicide as he stands at a statue which honors Horace Mann - recognized as the father of modern education - and bears the inscription shown above: Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.  As Professor Fowler laments that he has won no victory and that his words have been lost on the youth he interacts with, a funny thing happens.  The ghosts of several of his fallen students appear before him, with a message from beyond the grave.

With a Christmas setting and a plot that sounds similar in tone to It's a Wonderful Life (despite the fact it originally aired at the beginning of June), you might guess that this is not your average Twilight Zone episode.  You'd be right.  Changing of the Guard offers no dark and sinister twist and in fact ends up with one of the series' more charming finales.  (Note from The Mike: As the final episode of the series' third season, this truly did represent a "changing of the guard". Season 4 broke from the series' tradition, replacing the normal 30 minute format with 18 one hour long episodes.)

While the tone certainly doesn't match much of the series, I found it quite rewarding on a personal level.  Though I am not a teacher in the strictest sense of the word, my real world job also consists of trying to mold young minds for the better, and I could relate very well with Professor Fowler's lamentation that he has failed in his endeavors.  It becomes difficult to see the positive aspects of the day to day grind, especially when you only have a certain amount of time working with a young mind, and educators don't often get a chance to see whether or not their efforts have paid off.  

Yet Changing of the Guard works as a good reminder that even the smallest thing - even a memorable quotation - might be all it takes to change the course of a youngster's life.  Pleasence sells the message well in his own way, and his reactions to the apparitions before him do more than enough to make the episode feel authentic despite its cliche plot.  While we've certainly come to expect the macabre from this series, this episode is a nice change of pace that reminds us that there are people out there who are waiting to inspire us - and that a few of them even reside in The Twilight Zone.

Midnight (Near) The Twilight Zone - Tales from the Pub

Recently, whilst inducting FMWL's first Hall of Fame class, I talked favorable about a fellow called Larry Blamire, and mentioned his webseries of short spoofs, Tales From the Pub. With episodes running around 2-3 minutes in length, the series offers several short tales of ridiculous terror that remind one of chiller TV shows like The Twilight Zone. Since I like Blamire's work and like The Twilight Zone, I figured this would be a fine topic to cover here...by posting a few of the videos from the series.

The first example I'll offer is entitled 'The Death Napkin'. It stars Andrew Parks, who also serves as the series' awesomely-named narrator Truphen Newben, and tells of a...well...a death napkin.


The second episode I want to point out is the "message from the beyond" tale entitled....well...'Message From Beyond', which features Blamire and Brian Howe. Howe is probably the most recognizable face in Blamire's troupe, having appeared in films like The Pursuit of Happyness and Gran Torino. Here, we hear about a fellow named Sturpy...


Lastly, here's the gorgeous Fay Masterson in 'There's Somebody Here', as a woman who feels a presence in the titular pub - and then offers up an incredibly paranoid response....


I hope you've enjoyed a few of my favorite bits from the spookiest Pub on YouTube. Until next time, I'm The Mike, saying

Midnight in The Twilight Zone - The Howling Man

"The prostrate form of Mr. David Ellington - scholar, seeker of truth, and regrettably finder of truth. A man who will shortly arise from his exhaustion to confront a problem that has tormented mankind since the beginning of time. A man who knocked on a door seeking sanctuary, and found instead the outer edges of The Twilight Zone."

When pressed to name my favorite episode of The Twilight Zone, one of the first few titles that comes to my mind is The Howling Man, the series' forty-first entry. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a video of the episode free online, though it is available on DVD via Netflix and retailers on a disc entitled More Treasures of The Twilight Zone. It's an episode that sits apart from the majority of the show's tales. While most of the series' best episodes focus around battles between good and evil, right and wrong, or moral and immoral, very few did what The Howling Man did - focused their attention squarely on the pitfalls of religion.

The Howling Man begins with David Ellington, an average American man, directly urging the audience to hear his story. As he relays it, he was hiking through central Europe a few years back, "just after THE war", and came across a monastery where he sought refuge from a storm. Following a Hitchcock-esque zoom in on the monastery (probably stock footage, but it's well used stock footage!) Ellington stumbles through the door and, after inquiring about a strange howling, passes out on the floor. This leads to Serling's opening narration that is listed above.

Narrators are usually right, which means that Mr. Ellington wakes to find himself in the midst of a dilemma. He quickly finds the source of the hound-like bellow, an imprisoned man who looks like a harmless sort and who's very persuasive. His claim is that the monk in charge, Brother Jerome (played by the legendary John Carradine), is a madman who's wrongly holding him hostage for a minor offense that his religion frowns upon. But Brother Jerome has an opposing story. He claims the nice man who's locked away isn't a man...but is the Devil himself.
One of the first things that I thought of while watching this episode unravel for the first time was that iconic quote from The Usual Suspects: "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist." The catch of Charles Beaumont's story here is exactly what that movie was considering - the rise of skepticism in modern culture. When Jerome begins to rave about the problems of the world and the effects that man in the cage has had on the world, we understand completely why Mr. Ellington would doubt his main point. That point - that the man in the cage, devil or not, is dangerous - is lost in the details of the story that Ellington simply can't fit into his world view.

I know a lot of people who have trouble with the concept of religion today, a whopping FIFTY years after this episode first aired, and the reasoning is often the same. There are many who approach people they want to "convert" with fanatical rantings and statements of certainty that they truly believe in, but they offer little understanding of what the person they're preaching to is willing to hear. David Ellington, like so many people today, is simply unsure he can believe these statements - which leads him to act against them in fear of his world changing if Brother Jerome is correct.
I won't say who's right or wrong in The Howling Man's conflict of interests, as that's something I hope you'll find out. But it's not a spoiler to say that the final scene of the episode accurately predicts a trend in society that continued after the war that was alluded to in the episode's opening and has continued in the decades since. Humanity, in total, has done a poor job of keeping the things that could be a danger locked away. Until we find a way to do so, we'll continue to go in circles. And while we're trying to figure out who's right and who's wrong, the deadly tools at our disposal will only lead to further conflicts.

Though it's dated and a bit cheesy, The Howling Man is a story about the views of our world today as much as it's a story about that central European monastery. And that is more than enough to make me see it as one of the definite treasures of The Twilight Zone.

Midnight in The Twilight Zone - Dust

Welcome to Midnight in The Twilight Zone, a new feature in which I look at some of my favorite episodes of what I consider the most fantastic anthology of the unknown ever produced. Each installment will feature one episode, starting tonight with Dust.

"There was a village, built of crumbling clay and rotting wood. And it squatted ugly under a broiling sun like a sick and mangy animal waiting to die. This village had a virus, shared by its people. It was the germ of squalor, of hopelessness, of a loss of faith. With the faithless, the hopeless, the misery-laden, there is time - ample time - to engage in one of the other pursuits of men. They begin to destroy themselves."

If you haven't seen the episode, you can view it at IMDB by clicking HERE.

Though Rod Serling did far better than I ever could, I present Dust, one of the most heartbreaking episodes of the series I've ever seen. In a town where a penitent young man is about to hanged for an accident that killed a young girl, the pig of a salesman (Thomas Gomez in a completely-vile-yet-PG-drunken-Orson-Welles-esque performance) that sold the hanging rope offers the boy's immigrant father a bag of magic dust which "turns hate into love". Of course, the dust is simply dirt he grabbed at the moment, and has no significant background.
Watching the boy's father, played by Vladimir Sokoloff, become ridiculed in front of the town's uncaring residents as he pleas for his son's life is one of the most tear inducing moments from the series' run. Sokoloff died just over a year after the episode aired, and it's sad to say that the aging Russian actor looked the part of a man in despair. As he flails his arms and screams for sympathy, the townsfolk do what most people today would do too - they break out in laughter. It's a breathtakingly sad moment.

But, things are not always as they seem in The Twilight Zone and the episode's plot comes to a more satisfying conclusion than many of its counterparts. While it's a bit heavy with its message and climaxes too early, Dust is a fantastic example of what The series asked us to "pay heed to the magic" many times before (and many more times after) Dust aired in the first week of 1961, but few episodes look as deeply into human despair as Serling's story for this episode did. And as he sums it up, in the human heart there is "a wizardry that costs far more than a few pieces of gold".

I'm not sure I know what that means, but I'm glad he said it with Dust.