My wife and I have a nightly tradition to watch the Twilight Zone on Pluto TV, which has every episode.

Can you recommend us a scary one? We're good to hop seasons, that's what we've been doing based on the here and there recommendations I've been seeing!

Thank you 🫶🏻

I’m continuing my run-through of the episodes I hadn’t watched in Twilight Zone Season 4. That brought me to the one episode I hadn’t watched because I really didn’t have an interest in watching, He’s Alive, which for those still unfamiliar with it is the one where (spoiler???) a neo-Nazi finds out that his secret mentor is literally Adolph Hitler. And it stars Dennis Hopper. After seeing it highly recommended in comments on my other posts, I tried to get in the right frame of mind to give this one a fair shake. Here are my thoughts.

1.      My first and foremost reaction was that this episode should have been set in West Germany. That would have been a setting where the portrayal neo-Naziism could be directly relevant without coming across as an editorial comment in itself. It would also have offered situations where the neo-Nazis might have an honest point, say, that the West German government which suppressed their public and embarrassing activities was allowing actual Nazi officers and officials to remain at their posts. Finally, a devastated post-war state is a far more natural context for a key element of the story, the friendship between Hopper’s character (how many TZ names are really memorable?) and a Holocaust survivor played by Ludwig Donath. (And yes, I looked up his real-world background.)

2.      Something else I just could not get past was the neo-Nazis using brownshirt uniforms. I did look into this, and concluded that this was likely inspired by the activities of George Lincoln Rockwell. Even with this context, I had no trouble standing by my initial conclusion, that this was not something that would have been done in an American context except (as Rockwell apparently did) in irony and/ or willful obnoxiousness. I would further say that the actual point about the insidiousness of hate would be made much better if the assumed “uniform” was part of a genuinely marginalized and misunderstood subculture, like the skinheads and biker gangs that actual neo-Nazis and crypto-Nazis were infiltrating. Now I’m wondering if this somehow led to Black Leather Jackets.

3.      The final make-or-break point for me was the “reveal” of Hitler. The obvious problem with this was that the show had already tried to portray the Austrian painter, notably in “The Man In The Bottle”, and the makeup and acting here isn’t appreciably better than what that one did literally for laughs. For me, the deeper issue that emerges from the already existing problems is that there is no contextual reason for the presumably intended shock to be felt by the antihero himself, and this goes straight back to my preceding points. A person who got here simply by listening to the message that Germans were being treated terribly no matter which side of the Iron Curtain they were on could still be shocked or horrified by the discovery that he was doing the dictator’s bidding, but he probably would not be wearing a literal Nazi uniform the whole time.

So, my take on this episode is pretty much the same as it was going in sight unseen: An episode severely flawed in concept which works as well as it does because of exceptionally good acting (if anything from Donath even more than Hopper). I will say that I definitely do wish Serling had been able to proceed with his plan for a feature film, if only because the points he clearly wanted to make were equally obviously never getting past network censorship. All in all, worth watching, but not in the league of the true bests of the season or the series.

I was watching Season 3’s episode The Trade-Ins and it dawned on me that the old man seemed familiar. Turns out that he was played by Joseph Schildkraut.

Schildkraut also played Alfred Becker in Season 3’s Deaths-Head Revisited, one of my favorite episodes.

The makeup was incredible. I only recognized him by his voice. I’ve seen every episode so many times and never noticed this. I wonder what other actors / actresses have played multiple roles without my realizing it.

Coherence is the movie I would absolutely suggest for any twilight zone fan. I just watched it the other day and it’s so good!!

Picked these up at my local library. Anyone familiar with these? Any good?

I’m continuing my way through Twilight Zone season 4, and I skipped ahead to The Bard. We all know this is one of if not THE most hated episodes of the entire run. I have also freely admitted that when I saw it as a young viewer, I liked it well enough for it to be one of my favorites of the hour-long episodes I had seen. After giving it one more look, I’m ready to lay down my defense of what is actually good in this episode.

1.      The opening- This introduces the main character played by Jack Weston, who previously appeared as a jerk in the classic The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street. This works establishing the character as what he is supposed to be, a self-important hack who can’t even make it in hack work, and with the appropriate foil of his agent, it’s a decent bit. The one real “problem” here is the sledgehammer musical cues, which establish a pattern throughout the episode of overplaying their hand even when handed a good one. Hey, at least they didn’t try a laugh track (again…). And while I’m at it, I would definitely watch the “zombie story”.

2.      The magic formula- Another bit that actually works, the hack tries to use a formula from a book of the black arts, and substitutes every single ingredient with a mundane alternative. What I find most entertaining is that the improvisation with materials on hand is quite typical for "real" practitioners of magic. It’s something, and it establishes that Serling could get humor out of a standard setup.

3.      Shakespeare- This is something even I find hit or miss, but averages are in the episode’s favor. John Williams turns in a good performance with real nuance. It’s most intriguing that he is aware of the passage of time and able to adapt to modern technology and vernacular, sparing us more routine “fish out of water” antics. The core dynamic is that he is in his own way as egotistical as the main character (as seen egregiously with his precise quotations of himself), but the hack actually proves to understand his business well enough to navigate the system. This, in turn, leads to a story that actually doesn’t have trouble filling out the hour-format run time.

4.      The sponsors- This includes several scenes, but especially one around the middle. Anyone familiar with the lore of the show will know this for a direct portrayal of the meddling and general frustration that drove Serling to create it in the first place, down to a dig about the depiction of suicide being scrubbed for inane reasons. This is real satire and a clearly personal statement that fits the themes and overall flow of the story.

5.      Burt Reynolds riffs Marlon Brando- The one thing that does usually get some favorable comment, young Burt Reynolds parodies method acting, and gets socked by Shakespeare. What’s easily overlooked is that nothing about his performance is simply “bad” acting on purpose. If anything, it shows another path that a certainly talented actor might have taken.

6.      Cora!- This is the girl who witnesses the main character’s conjuring and appears again at the end, played by Judy Strangis. All I can say is that she is not only the best thing here, but easily better than everything else combined. This is potential brimming over, to the point that I braced myself for the worst when I looked up the actress. It turns out she had a rough ride, but she is still alive after a long career.

So, do I really still like this episode? From my own experience, it’s probably best appreciated by younger viewers, which may well have been the intention all along. It is also important for anyone studying Serling’s career and work. In full hindsight, it’s about average as a piece of 1960s comedy, which happens to have been remembered long after its intended operational lifespan. It’s not “good”, but it can be watchable with the right mood, and oh dear Logos (which is an actual name of God), you could do much, MUCH worse, in and out of TZ. That’s enough for me to call it a day.

Remember the episode about the piano that would reveal a persons true self

The Grave is one that definitely wouldn’t IMO, and I guess The Purple Testament is one that would!

I'm continuing my trip through episodes I've never watched from season 4, and got to one of the most talked about but seemingly least correspondingly liked, Mute. Here are my thoughts, which went long enough that I'm giving this one its own post.

1. What I find striking about the episode is that it's not so much polarizing the fandom as it is consistently mixed in appraisal. Most people see it as flawed but having some merit, and it definitely never got the outright hate that The Bard and a few other hour-long episodes do. My own appraisal is pretty much in agreement. The acting and dialogue are about average, with a little extra wordiness. The story is done well enough that it could really work just as well if you took out the sci fi element and made it a straight drama, which considering the level of the concepts is in itself kind of THE problem.

2. For extra legwork, I speed-read through the Matheson short story, which I had not only read but acknowledged as an influence on a neurodiversity-themed anime fan fic I have out there called Music In The Spheres. What stood out to me is that one thing the story does well is portraying non-verbal intelligence. In rational hindsight, this should have been a red flag made of other red flags that the story as written was literally unfilmable. That went straight into my most immediate beef with the actual episode, the supposedly pre-verbal telepath can still understand verbalized thoughts. This was clearly a necessary conceit for the audiovisual medium, but it also directly waters down the posited central conflict of verbal and nonverbal communication.

3. My further thought on looking through the story is that there are problems the episode inherited from it. One is definitely the teacher, revealed as a closeted telepath who was subjected to abuse for her gift. In the story, it gives an angle to sympathize with the authority figure, but it didn't get developed there or in the episode. Then what really stood out reading it in the anthology Twilight Zone: The Original Stories is that it's substantially longer than other Matheson stories adapted for TZ, including Death Ship which also became an hour-long episode. By further comparison, it's just clunky, and not up to Matheson's usual economical standards.

So, that's my appraisal of a notorious episode. In case I wasn't getting flamed already, here's a link for that fan fic.

They have some specific dialect in there, like saying "et" instead of "ate," "dad-gum," "dagnabit," etc. The name "Comfort." Arkansas? Tennessee? Oklahoma? I wanna know if you have a theory! Or if you think they just didn't want to offend a specific state and get letters....

I'm still delaying a post on the best of season 4, and in the process, I figured out that I have no recollection of watching close to half of the hour long episodes. Today I took a crack at Of Late I Think Of Cliffordville, and I was reasonably impressed. It's definitely not going to rearrange my best list, but I rate it ahead of Escape Clause as a deal-with-the-devil tale and better than Once Upon A Time as a time travel plot. My favorite part, the empowered demoness telling the businessman that he can't bargain with his soul b/c they already have it. What do you think of this one?

The episode began during the closing days of the second world war. A group of men were stationed outside of a cave that a bunch of Japanese were hiding in. The Japs were fighting with valor. And despite the fact they lacked resources and supplies. Were still able to barely hold their position.

The war weary Yanks didn't seem to mind. Disenchanted from years of conflict. But the newly arrived commanding officer who hadn't seen much warfare was eager to strike at the cavern. His soldiers defended the honor of the Japanese. Saying would it be fine if they slaughtered every last citizen of that island. He said it didn't make a difference. When approached with the idea that they were men deserving of respect. He responded with "They are the enemy! It doesn't matter if it's the first day of the war or the last day of the war! They must perish!"

The commander then dropped his Binoculars. But when one of his men went to pick it up for him. He found it was not his men. But a Japanese Soldier. He had suddenly changed perspectives. He was now a Japanese officer in the year 1942. Surrounding that same cave. Only now, It was Americans that were trapped. Barely holding on to dear life. When an even higher official ordered an attack. Our main protagonist dared to stand for the Yankees. Appealing to their common humanity. His new boss screamed.  "They are the enemy! It doesn't matter if it's the first day of the war or the last day of the war! They must perish!"

He was then transported back to his original possession. During which news came over the radio that the United states had dropped massive weapons they were calling 'atom bombs' over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The army was ordering all troops to stand by to see how things would play out. As the soldiers celebrated the coming end of the war. One of them looked over at their shocked C.O. Solemnly looking over the Japanese cave. The soldier said "Don't worry, There will be other wars. Other men in caves you can go slaughter." The now changed main protagonist put down his binoculars and whispered "God no, God I hope not".

This episode was a great one. And undoubtedly struck close to home for Rod Sterling. Who had served in the Pacific theater of WWII. And made this show at a time when humanity was on the brink of total annihilation. It's interesting to me how many great artists of his generation served in that conflict. Gene Roddenberry, Charles Shultz, Ian Fleming, etc. And it's probably why so many of them had great insight on the horrors of war. This show was no exception.

Whether it be the episode where all the Union and Confederate fatalities were walking to an unknown destination. Or the one where all the southern soldiers were tempted to betray their god just so they could win the civil war. This show told many tales of the horrors of mans fetish to kill ones brother.

Finally, I apologies for the overabundance of the word where. I noticed that in editing. I'm definitely that struggling screenwriter from the Shakespeare episode.

i'm not watching the bard again until i get a blu-ray player and the blu-ray box set, it was so dogshit. yes, i am considering a blu-ray player for the twilight zone and nothing else

https://preview.redd.it/90lkod5zvmfe1.png?width=1140&format=png&auto=webp&s=26e5211707e0ea2f55268baa2746a0234b2fc2a1

Was Richard Contre playing Rod Serling similar in looks I know that Rod Serling dealt with P.T.S.D.

"Logic is an enemy and truth is a menace" oo

Just wanted to see you alls thoughts on the episode, The Shelter.

“But like every one of the super-states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace.”

https://youtu.be/qyfmWaErXkw?si=bj3qHo1BobEoWx1H

Going my way?