Episode Guide for the Twilight Zone Series
I’m terribly sorry you missed it, if you did. Or I’m sorry if it didn’t air in your area. The Twilight Zone Marathon is the event of the year for one who grew up watching the originals on television, for one who is a TV freak, and for one who was pitifully alone this New Year’s Eve and Day. Besides the most obvious reason for watching The Twilight Zone vignettes—which is that they are the most cleverly crafted and produced and acted works of the genre since Hitchcock’s films—there are a few bits of rationale for the appeal of The Twilight Zone episodes, on CD or on TV…all in one [very long—48-hour] sitting.
WARNING: The following contains a few episode spoilers…sorry.
EPISODE GUIDE for TWILIGHT ZONE
The episode guide, which offers small descriptive blurbs, contains no spoilers. You will read, “ ‘Queen of the Nile’ : Fantasy, Science Fiction, Suspense. (1964) Actress’ ageless beauty puzzles writer.” You will be eerily surprised when that agelessness and beauty, come to find out, successfully evaded the nosy investigations of writers but could not keep the old lady (Mrs. Draper, played by Ruth Phillips) from revealing the truth: Young Draper is actually old Draper; the old lady is actually the beauty’s daughter. Doo-doo-doo-doo.
Or you will read, “ ‘Time Enough at Last’ : Fantasy, Science Fiction, Suspense. (1959) Bank teller longs for time alone to read.” You find that Burgess Meredith’s character, Henry Beemis, is a bibliophile with a need for a twelve-step program…or for everyone to just leave him alone so he can read, hunkering over his stories, his beady eyes wide with joy (or the thick glasses he can’t see without). You will be so happy for him, after he sneaks to the bank vault at work, and locks himself in…to read in uninterrupted glee.
You will be even happier, when, upon a massive explosion, Beemis finds the boom and rumble was a nuclear devastation of all humans, leaving him to roam the wreckage, come upon a city library, stack the books according to reading schedules (one for every day of year one, year two, three, etc.), and sit down in exhausted delight. But you will also appreciate the last minute of what makes the show so addicting: Beemis is so cocky with solitude and the promise of perpetual reading that he jostles his inch-thick reading glasses to the cement, breaking them…. Doo-doo-doo-doo.
I won’t give any more of my favorites away, but just tell you that suffice it to say mannequins spooking Marcia, or the couple who wake up to strange surroundings are far more than what the cryptic and obscure blurbs suggest they are….
THE CAST and STARS
If you are a big film-goer, you will recognize your favorite stars…in almost every episode, or will at least see stars you had wondered about and hadn’t seen around for awhile. Some of the celebrities who did the original Twilight Zone are as follows:
Burgess Meredith (whom some might only remember as Penguin on the Batman original series)
Robert Redford
Ted Stanhope
William Shatner (who is in a number of episodes)
Ann Blyth
Dick York (Derwood, Dubbins, er, Darrin Stevens, later)
Martin Landau
Telly Sevalis
Gig Young
Bill Mumy (“Lost in Space” boy)
Jack Klugman (Odd…)
Buddy Ebsen
John Astin (who goes on to act in another memorable series with memorable intro music: badadada.snap-snap.badadada.snap-snap)
And, of course, the inimitable Rod Serling, the creator, the genius. And what ever happened to him? Did he vanquish inside one of his own episodes?
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