The Twilight Zone 5.25 – The Masks

Sometimes, it’s fair to say that Rod Serling’s prose could get very purple. In “The Masks,” he never uses two words when ten would do. Almost all of the story’s weight is placed on the shoulders of the family patriarch, played by Robert Keith in his final screen role. He died almost three years after this first aired in March of 1964. The story is structured so that almost all of the exchanges are variations on Keith telling his awful family “You’re all terrible people,” and the ungrateful kin politely replying “Please don’t say such awful things.” They have to be polite. They’re in this for his money.

So I was pleased that our son was able to follow along no matter how florid the language became, and he laughed at the insults. It helped that the rotten children and grandchildren were so obviously rotten, drawn in absurdly broad strokes to make the twist work. I think this one could have benefited from being made in the previous season as an hour-long episode. With more time available, the characterization could have been more subtle and the twist more delicious. At least these jerks deserved their fate, which isn’t always the case in this show. As with many other stories we’ve watched, this one got a pronouncement of “creepy!” I think our kid enjoyed it more than he has many others.

I was interested to see that “The Masks” was directed by Ida Lupino, who had starred in the memorable Zone installment “The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine” back in season one. She was doing lots of television directing in the mid-sixties, on shows as disparate as The Fugitive, Gilligan’s Island, and Honey West, when she wasn’t acting.

The Twilight Zone 5.7 – The Old Man in the Cave

Speaking of MacGyver, here’s the actor who played his grandfather, John Anderson, along with James Coburn and John Marley, in a 1963 Twilight Zone written by Rod Serling from a story by Henry Slesar. It’s an agreeably bleak look at the grim, post-apocalyptic future of 1974, but the twist is so remarkably dated that this is the sort of story that can only have been told in old books and television. It’s fair to say that I didn’t see it coming; it’s difficult to remember how frightened people used to be of ordinary technology that Anderson’s character would want to keep it locked away from the rubes. Our son was absolutely baffled, and left only with a dislike of Coburn’s very “mean” character.

The Twilight Zone 5.1 – In Praise of Pip

Back to The Twilight Zone for eleven selections from its final season. To start with, I picked “In Praise of Pip,” which was written by Rod Serling. It’s Bill Mumy’s third appearance in the program, but it’s really worth watching for Jack Klugman’s amazing performance. Life kind of got in the way tonight and so I don’t have much to share, but I did want to make sure I praised Klugman as Pip’s dad, because he was just so good in this. That and our son was very confused by the jump in time before the final scene. Several weeks pass, but, especially since the scene takes place in the same location as the one before it, it looked to him like it was the following morning.

Also, remember those cigarette companies that used to sponsor this show? Well, they must have found some other kind of sponsor in season five, because Klugman smokes Morley in this one!

Morley King Size! The 555 of Cigarettes!

The Twilight Zone 4.14 – Of Late I Think of Cliffordville

Strange little coincidences with this morning’s episode of The Twilight Zone, which Rod Serling scripted from a short story called Blind Alley by Malcolm Jameson. As regular readers may recall, I picked most of the new-to-me episodes for our viewing based on whether I knew the actors, and I always enjoy seeing the people who would later play villains on Batman in these roles. So the other day, we watched an episode with Burgess Meredith as the devil, and this morning, we watched Julie Newmar as the devil. I genuinely didn’t know when I picked these what the plots of these tales were!

The other nice surprise was that title. As we started watching this show, I quickly became bored of Rod Serling’s use of the good old days trope of old men’s nostalgia for simpler times. I don’t think even Julie Newmar could save yet another one of these tales of men looking starry-eyed at old town squares. But that’s not what this is about at all, mercifully! Albert Salmi plays a downright sadistic robber baron who, having made his final, ultimate, screw-turning “deal,” has thirty million in the bank and is bored. The devil, here in the guise of a travel agent named Miss Devlin, offers him the chance to go back to 1910 and do it all again, only this time with all the memories of his past and about $1400 in his pocket. But memories are fragile, imperfect things.

Once again, our son really didn’t enjoy this story. Salmi’s character is just too darn mean. Even when we pointed out that this is a story about a mean guy getting his comeuppance, he wouldn’t budge. But he did understand even the talkiest bits. The story opens with Salmi twisting the knife into a very old rival and letting him know his only way out is bankruptcy, and we paused it to clarify what went on, but he recapped it very well for us. On the other hand, none of us spotted that the very old rival was played by gravel-voiced John Anderson, who we’ve seen twice as MacGyver’s grandfather Harry, so pobody’s nerfect.

Actually, I’ll tell you who really wasn’t perfect, and that’s the makeup artist for this story. Sure, they had a chore making Salmi, Anderson, and Wright King all look fifty years older for the stuff set in the present so they could appear as their normal ages in 1910’s Cliffordville, but you’d have to have been watching with a bent antenna in a snowstorm on a very small TV set in 1963 to ignore Salmi’s unbelievably phony bald cap!

The Twilight Zone 3.33 – The Dummy

Cliff Robertson, who we saw in a second season Twilight Zone a few months ago, came back for a really bleak and scary turn in the third season. Some of this story was over our son’s head, as it concerns a nightclub entertainer who’s having a long breakdown and an even longer argument with his manager. The psychological story is a little more adult than what he’s used to.

Robertson is amazing in this, and the direction is just wild. When Robertson’s character starts hearing the shrieking voice of his puppet, the angle of the camera changes with almost every different shot. The Twilight Zone was often visually interesting, but this was very, very ahead of its time. It climaxes with one of the all-time great Zone payoffs, one which, wonderfully, I didn’t actually see coming at all. The kid didn’t like it very much, but I certainly did.

The Twilight Zone 3.24 – To Serve Man

You might ask yourself, wasn’t our son a little young to start watching The Twilight Zone? And honestly, there have been times that the cultural divide of nearly sixty years has seemed awfully vast for such a small boy, but I wanted to get started when he was six because the twist of “To Serve Man” is one of those that just about everybody learns before they actually see the story.

I’m genuinely curious, readers. If you’re in your forties or younger, did you ever get to see this unspoiled? It’s like the end of Citizen Kane. If you didn’t see this in the sixties, you heard the twist before you could see it.

And so I thought I was able to sneak this under the bar and apparently I failed. Our son exclaimed “I knew it! I knew it!” And this is not how he responds to the devilish twists of The Twilight Zone. He insisted that he knew where this one was going as soon as he heard the title. So this morning, I was looking over a gargantuan list of movies and TV shows that have referenced the Kanamits’ cookbook. It’s in Madagascar. Madafreakinggascar! My wife was hurrying to finish making her lunch and get out the door. “Has he seen Madagascar in afterschool care?!” I grumbled. “That would explain it,” she said. “He did seen very sincere last night.”

And to think I gave that dumb movie a pass for the wonderful gag about flinging poo at Tom Wolfe!

Anyway, the surprisingly large cast of “To Serve Man” includes Lloyd Bochner and Susan Cummings, with Richard Kiel as the main Kanamit and Joseph Ruskin, uncredited, as the alien’s voice. The screenplay was written by Rod Serling from a story by Damon Knight. Some of the special effects were repurposed from Ray Harryhausen’s 1956 movie Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, which is a much better movie than you’d expect from one with a name that silly. It’s a pretty good episode.

You know, I’ve held off showing him Planet of the Apes because the gorillas are so amazingly cruel. I’ll try to accept the probability that some fool cartoon with breakdancing pigs or linedancing antelopes has referenced the end of that one as well.

The Twilight Zone 3.14 – Five Characters in Search of an Exit

“Five Characters in Search of an Exit” is by some measure my favorite episode of this series, but I’ve never enjoyed it so much as I did tonight, as our son tried figuring it out. He was so excited as the stranded characters stand on each other’s shoulders to climb out of their prison that he couldn’t sit down any more. The tension was unbelievable! And he summed it up by saying “That! When I found out where they were, that was, that was just so crazy!” It really is just about the best twist ending in anything, ever.

The characters are played by Clark Allen, Kelton Garwood, Susan Harrison, Murray Matheson, and William Windom. The screenplay was written by Rod Serling from a short story by Marvin Petal. It is a wonderful half hour.

The Twilight Zone 3.8 – It’s a Good Life

I amused myself last night by telling our son, who, like little Anthony Fremont, is six, that this episode of The Twilight Zone is about a boy who can have everything that he wants, only it’s told from the adult’s perspective. He puzzled over what that might mean while I chuckled.

The really interesting thing about watching Bill Mumy’s star turn in “It’s a Good Life,” written by Rod Serling from a short story by Jerome Bixby, in the company of a six year-old is comparing Anthony’s utter lack of emotional maturity with our boy’s. Our son, of course, has been told “no” many, many times. He watched in real fascination as this horrifying story unfolded, with John Larch and Cloris Leachman absolutely riveting in their portrayals of parents crippled with fear at what their son has become.

“One teeny thing I like about The Twilight Zone is that it teaches you a lesson,” our son offered unexpectedly. We talked a little bit about how important it is to be told you can’t do something, and to understand why, when possible. I’m sure that won’t keep him from wishing we could be teleported into some cornfield the next time that we tell him he’s had enough screen time for the day, but maybe he’ll not judge us too harshly now that he has seen what can become of kids who get absolutely everything that they want.

The Twilight Zone 2.29 – The Obsolete Man

I knew going in that “The Obsolete Man” was probably going to be a little over our six year-old’s head. I also knew the blasted kid would fail to recognize Burgess Meredith yet again, and I was right. Rod Serling’s story is a warning about a totalitarian state which, having proved that God does not exist and books are unnecessary, has begun a long purge of citizens who do not contribute to society. Librarians like Meredith’s character are in line to be “liquidated,” leading to a war of nerves between Meredith’s character and a State chancellor played by Fritz Weaver.

The concept was a bit heady for him, although drawing a comparison to the original film of Logan’s Run, which, honestly by chance, he rewatched just a couple of days ago, helped him understand that this is one of those stark and awful futures where the government decides who lives and dies and the people just go along with it. He was still a little thrown by the visuals, though. The librarian’s apartment is handled simply enough, but the State office is a minimalist nightmare with a towering podium. It is designed and lit like something from German expressionist cinema; the citizens who pass judgement on their fellows’ obsolescence move like dancers hired for an experimental theater production. It’s very exciting to see something that looks so thunderously strange and written with such anger and passion shown on a major network.

I was very pleased to hear him quizzing his mommy about what he’d seen. They had a good discussion about the value of people. This was a very worthwhile half-hour.

That’s all from the second season of The Twilight Zone, but stay tuned! We’ll be looking at some highlights from season three in March.

The Twilight Zone 2.28 – Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?

There are a couple of more obvious visuals that one might provide to illustrate the famous and delightful Rod Serling story “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?,” but I didn’t want to be obvious. Even though one photo of Barney Phillips is so iconic that it’s used as his main biography picture at IMDB, I think there may yet be one or two people in the world who don’t know where this episode goes. They even use the photo as the illustration in the DVD booklet! Life is full enough of spoilers, and the ending is so amusing that it should have been kept a little more secretive.

I had hoped that our son might play along and try to guess which of seven bus passengers stranded in a rural diner called the Hi-Way Cafe might be a space alien, but he didn’t. He was more concerned about why the Martian landed his ship in a pond. It just goes to show you, sometimes there’s a deeper mystery to consider than the one that the program makers wish for you to ponder.

Anyway, other than Phillips, this episode features a small cast of notable actors, including John Hoyt and Jack Elam, who’s aggravatingly blocking a funny little sign promising buttermilk hot cakes for 60 cents in the picture above. You could add ham or bacon for fifteen cents more. Coffee is a dime a cup, and they charge for refills. Does anybody remember paying a buck forty for fourteen cups of coffee? Sometimes the past isn’t just another country, it’s another planet. Mars, probably.

Elam also namechecks Ray Bradbury when the state troopers foolishly let everybody know that they’re looking for a space alien. Bradbury would contribute a teleplay to The Twilight Zone‘s next season, which of course we plan to watch. Look for that in the spring. And, in a funny but still disagreeable moment, those Oasis cigarettes that we talked about last time make an in-story appearance, where one of the characters comments on their pleasant taste. Maxwell House should have sponsored that dime-a-cup coffee, so somebody could note that it’s good to the last drop.

The Twilight Zone 2.24 – The Rip Van Winkle Caper

Overall, I have been much, much happier with the season two episodes that I selected for us to sample, but I had to hit a loser eventually. In Rod Serling’s “The Rip Van Winkle Caper,” Oscar Beregi Jr. and Simon Oakland are among a group of four criminals who heist a train and go into suspended animation for a century to avoid detection. Weirdly, Serling didn’t do anything with the resulting situation that even required suspended animation and de facto time travel, just the desperation of criminals in the desert. There are some good performances – Oakland’s character is remarkably vicious – but I was left wanting them to get on with it and check out the world of the 2060s already.

By far the most interesting thing about the presentation was seeing Rod Serling endorse Oasis cigarettes after a preview of next week’s installment. Evidently, Oasis offered “the softest taste of all.” It doesn’t quite have the “I can’t believe I just saw that” cache of the Flinstones hawking Winston cigarettes, but it was an oddball little surprise. Since so many of these sponsorship ads from the period were trimmed from the films for rebroadcast, it was nice to see this in such splendid quality! Although clearly Oasis should have enlisted the services of the Flinstones because they still make Winstons, unfortunately, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Oasis before this evening.