An end was in sight, or at least some sort of fashion of one. By the third season of the much acclaimed but little viewed programme The Twilight Zone, its creator and head writer Rod Serling was growing by his own admission rather “weary” with the project. At the time Serling commented that he’s “never quite felt quite so drained of ideas as [he did] at this moment”. To put in context Serling’s relationship with the show, he had contributed thus far 48 scripts to the series, 73% of the shows output. Serling however still gave us classic episodes this season, with lots more input from what would become the core bench of other Twilight Zone writers; Richard Matheson, George Clayton Johnson, Earl Hamner and of course Charles Beaumont. The series also featured a fine, but not stellar, episode from perhaps the show’s biggest influence, the author Ray Bradbury. Yet despite all of Serling’s tiredness, 15 more exceptional episodes made it to this ranking, along with many other runner-ups. Let’s talk about some of these episodes now, shall we?
NOTE: As many fans of
the show, and many passive viewers know, there is a great aspect of the show
that is the endings. Some such endings will be eluded to in these essays. If
this affects you, then re-watch the seasons and then return here. However I do
feel that with so many of these episodes, the endings are already iconic and
never hinder my repeat watching’s in many instances, instead effects them in a
positive manner. Albeit, you have been warned.
15. The Fugitive (Episode 90 – March 9, 1962)
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A delightful family friendly episode to start us with here. Charles Beaumont takes us on a journey with Susan Gordon’s little Jenny, an orphan child who has befriended a man she knows as Old Ben, who is in actuality an extra-terrestrial, played wonderfully warm by J. Pat O’Malley. The plot isn’t anything too special here, but it does have a very nice and well conceived clever ending. The reason to watch this episode is more so for the loving relationship between Jenny and Old Ben, the sort of sweet familial thing that you don’t usually get in your stays to The Twilight Zone. Richard L. Bare directs with a focus on this relationship and the episode is all the better for it, with some still spectacular costume effects used throughout.
14. The Little People (Episode 93 – March 30, 1962)
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This Serling entry is a wicked two hander between two Twilight Zone alums, Joe Maross, of Third From the Sun acclaim, and Claude Akins, reprising the sort of level headed figure he first brought us in The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street. This episode that would later become the basis of a Simpsons sketch, follows Maross’s descent into madness as he makes himself a self-proclaimed god over a town of ant-size beings. Akins is the voice of reason and the strength of this episode lies with these two excellent performers delivering Serling’s wonderful debate based scenes. The final kicker drives home the futility of dictatorship in a world where... pardon the pun, there will always be someone bigger looking down on you. A great piece of work from director William F. Claxton, incorporating effects shots sparingly to build the world we have entered, whilst never letting them get in the way of the story that we are telling. A story that spans millennia and centuries of history, whilst never leaving this small patch of land that we find ourselves in.
13. The Jungle (Episode 77 – December 1, 1961)
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A devastatingly simple episode based solely around two key elements; the sound design of Bill Edmondson and Franklin Milton, creating an entire world that we never see through an intense sound-scape, one part cacophony of jungle sounds and the other a tense build-up of sounds of pure horror. The second element is John Dehner’s performance, with sparring dialogue not at his side, Dehner performs a breadth of emotion often without speech, akin in many ways to Agnes Moorhead’s work in The Invaders. The sparring words however are also brilliant, with another Beaumont script dissecting themes of colonialism and appropriation of land, through the use of some perhaps outdated and stereotypical folklore, the themes of destruction are brought from the other side of the world slap bang into the middle of the concrete jungle we inhabit for the episode. Before of course, returning home to find what we find.
12. Kick the Can (Episode 86 – February 9, 1962)
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An episode that for all intense and purposes is all fun and games until the final refrain. This tale of nostalgia and fantastical whimsy from George Clayton Johnson puts us in Sunnyvale rest, a home for the aged, with Ernest Treux on top form as a rebellious soul in an elderly body, and his best and closest friend Russell Collins on similar top form exemplifying exactly what is expected of the two characters in their age and this point of their lives. The piece is for the most part a fun and jolly tale with touches of the darkness of old age as a consistent undercurrent. However once Johnson ends the tale we find that as much as we are in a tale of childhood joy and a return to that for these characters, we are also noting the final moments of such joy dying within the soul of our second male lead. And is it just me, or is John Marley one of those actors where you can never not see their previous work, particularly in this case,I just can’t see them without bloodied gold bed sheets?
11. One More Pallbearer (Episode 82 – January 12, 1962)
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A four person close quarters episode from Serling that places us in a bomb shelter for a very elaborate prank at the hands of Paul Radin, in a performance from Joseph Wiseman that is the episodes’ greatest success. This character study of a sociopathic millionaire finally in possession of the funds that he needs to get the petty revenges that have haunted him all of his life. The destruction of Wiseman through the dialogue of the other inhabitants of the bunker, portrayed wonderfully by Katherine Squire, Trevor Bardette and Cage Clarke, lends to the slow building explosion at the heart of this piece and Radin’s plan. What form of explosion and who may be the victim or victims of such a thing is where all of the tension comes from and Serling moulds it to it’s diabolically ironic climax beautifully.
10. The Changing of the Guard (Episode 102 – June 1, 1962)
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The final episode of this series is the second Christmas set episode of the show, despite this time being aired in June, unlike Night of the Meek. The episode is a supernatural proto-Dead Poets Society¸ with Donald Pleasance portraying a professor on the verge of suicide after being forcibly retired. Pleasance, despite being a whole decade younger than the role he is playing, fills the episode with the exact pathos and heart that make that great film such a success, and what makes this episode successful too. One could comment with its suicidal lead and it’s supernatural leanings and Christmas setting, that the piece may also work as a companion to It’s a Wonderful Life. But no matter what the influences may be, true or not, this episode serves as an elegant winter tale full of pain, tragedy and ultimately the exact brand of hope and happiness that we want at winter and that we sometimes miss in The Twilight Zone.
9. A Game of Pool (Episode 70 – October 13, 1961)
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This wickedly smart two-hander from George Clayton Johnson, follows Jack Clugman, in his personal favourite of his four appearances, and Jonathon Winters, in his first dramatic role, caught in a game of fates, a game of skill, A Game of Pool. Buzz Kulick manages to fill every inch of what could be a stale episode with its conceit into a thrilling visually dynamic episode, bolstered by two brilliant performances brimming with wit, pathos and thoughtfulness, and one of Johnson’s best scripts. But this is not Johnsons’ best script, that we will keep until later, further up this ranking. Pool gleefully balances huge themes of the afterlife and legacy with a sport delightfully trivial in its presentation. Kulick and Johnson play games with this all throughout, adding unbridled tension to the smallest of moments and letting conversations on the universe have seemingly no more weight in the episode than any conversations about the sport, making it a rich piece and very rewatchable in the tale that it presents to the viewer.
8. The Passerby (Episode 69 – October 6, 1961)
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One of the more haunting and horror based episodes that Serling ever wrote, whilst being simultaneously imbued with the spirit of a nation in-between wars lamenting and contemplating the wars that they have ventured before and will venture soon after. The episode was in actuality first aired one hundred years after the beginning of the American Civil war that offers it’s bleak and horrific landscape as it’s setting for this tale of the afterlife and ghosts walking the plain. We remain on the ruined porch of a southern plantation with James Gregory and Joanna Linville as parades and parades of ghosts pass by, fuelling conversations on our place in the world and the futility of war. Serling’s final reveal of the final passerby could be met with laughter or comments of absurdity, however the power of Serling’s writing is that such a moment which could be perceived as ridiculous is filled with as much pathos and sadness as any of the other moments in this beautifully elegiac episode.
7. Five Characters in Search of an Exit (Episode 79 – December 22, 1961)
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A bizarre oddity of a concept from Serling, based on Marvin Patel’s short story, that finally reveals itself to be an almost perfectly disturbing version of a story that we could come to view in a far more light-hearted and animated fashion in the 90’s. Our characters are that of a major, William Windom playing most with the paranoia and confusion of the set-up. Susan Harrison as a ballerina, a tragic vision of a beauty trapped. Clark Allen as a bagpiper, along with Kelton Garwood as a tramp, both of which remain more quiet than the others and lend their resigantion to add to the horror if it all. Our final character and perhaps ever our lead is Murray Matheson’s terrific turn as a mercurial clown, commenting on the situation with a gaiety untapped amongst the other characters. Lamont Johnson directs the cast and the action to its unsettling climax with expertise and a great hand on the absurdity of the situation, aswell as the inherent truth of it. And what a climax it is.
6. The Shelter (Episode 68 – September 29, 1961)
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A timeless piece of writing from Serling that plays in many ways as a companion piece to The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, with this as a subterranean version of that same story; a group of friends and neighbours let paranoia tear them apart as family after family fights to break into the bomb shelter of Dr. Bill Stockton, who they had only just been celebrating his birthday with. Except here there are no supernatural or sci-fi elements, the pure horror and adrenaline of the episode comes from the very human horror brought about by our characters. Relentlessly ahead of its time in its depictions of racial intolerance and bomb paranoia on television, the episode still works today and is just as effective as it was when it was first aired. Lamont Johnson directs again with a powerfully direct build of tension and focus on the intimate micro of the setting and the widespread nature of the macro of it all. A powerful and painfully effective episode.
5. Deaths-head Revisited (Episode 74 – November 10, 1961)
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One of the most profound and affecting episode of The Twilight Zone, Deaths-head Revisited is a powerful piece on the holocaust from a Jewish writer, Serling, exploring the plague of intolerance and murder that will haunt us a species until the end of the time. On its base level this is an exceptional two hander episode between the ghost of an executed Jew, played extraordinarily well by Joseph Schildkraut, and Oscar Beregi Jr, who is frighteningly gleeful in the beginning of the story and torn apart excruciatingly by the pains of an entire nation by the end. Both performances are some of the best the show ever knew. But this also includes some of Serling’s most thought-provoking and well-written narrations and monologues that he ever gave the show, and the world. Serling here is demonstrating an ungodly talent and aptitude for exploring the darkest of themes with the most precise and thoughtful of touches.
4. The Midnight Sun (Episode 75 – November 17, 1961)
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One of the rare occasions that the whole “It was all a dream thing” worked, and hell does it work well here. However before that brilliant climax Anton Leader directs a wonderful piece of tragedy and thrilling tension as we come face to face with the acceptance of death, with Lois Nettleton as Norma and Betty Garde as Mrs Bronson, two souls trapped on an earth travelling closer and closer to the sun each day, leading to the sort of heat that will melt the paint, dry the wells and eventually kill them both off. This combination of intense sci-fi horror and the human drama of accepting a fate and a death you have no control over leads to a sensational episode with great performances all around and an overwhelming sense of heat that makes you feel just about scorched too.
3. To Serve Man (Episode 89 – March 2, 1962)
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Yes, it’s that one. The one with those three magic words that anybody with a passing knowledge of the show, or a previous viewing of the episode, screamed in their heads the minute they read the episode title. But as with our last episode discussed, this is so much more than those three words, despite my own admitted love of those three words myself. As a matter of fact I recently showed a group of six or so people who had never even heard of the show, never mind seeing it, this episode as their first ever episode, for in many ways it epitomises everything that people have come to know of the show. Richard Kiel is wonderfully still and sardonic as everyone of our Kanamits. Susan Cummings has the great line and takes relish in it. Lloyd Bochner is our centre and is great too, adding a further oddity to the episode with a 4th wall break, that fits here in this episode all in all. A great, great and ultimately very classic episode of television.
2. Nothing in the Dark (Episode 81 – January 5, 1962)
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The aforementioned two-hander from Clayton Johnson that I believe is the finest writing he ever did. Lamont Johnson directs again and takes us through a relentlessly touching and beautiful rumination on death and the acceptance thereof. Gladys Cooper stars as the aged and decrepit Wanda, trapped by choice in her run-down home avoiding the thing she fears most, a figure she has self-titled Mr. Death. The episode follows Wanda as she against her will welcomes in Robert Redford in a very young and ultimately star-making role, as a wounded police officer who is brought in. Redford is charming and delightful and we can see exactly every ounce of the star that he is about to become. This paired with Cooper’s pained performance of the sort of trivial person we pass everyday leads to this episode being one of the finest explorations on death that the show ever saw, and that media ever saw. A splendidly taut and thoughtful episode that I will truly never forget and I know will only grow in importance and power as my life continues.
1. It’s a Good Life (Episode 73 – November 3, 1961)
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This ingenious adaptation by Serling of Jerome Bixby’s short story, directed by James Sheldon, tells the story of Anthony Freemont, a little boy played by Bill Mumy with the precision and calibre of a well aged performer. Little Anthony is one of the most horrifying creations ever put to a screen and this episode milks every brutal ounce of horror that can be milked from the concept. Cloris Leachman and John Larch are just to name a few of the exceptional ensemble that lead to this episode being one of the most deeply unsettling and completely unforgettable episodes that the show ever made. Every single line of this script is delivered with an insane amount of complexity in performance, balancing pure rage, with great horror, deep sadness, all purveyed by a childlike naivety that will consume them all. A truly incredible episode that Times magazine named the third best episode of all time and I am naming it the best episode of Series 3.
And so another season and article draws to a close. There is a sad note here to end however, with this series marking an end on the horizon for a show that meant so much to so few at the time, but has gone on to become one of the most iconic and seminal pieces of media ever created. The legendary producer of the show Buck Houghton exited the series for a position at Four state productions, this also marked as aforementioned the start of the end for Serling’s involvement with the show. But it is the legacy of this show and its immense quality that even in its lowest points it made a plethora of incredible episodes. A testament and a reminder of the quality found in The Twilight zone.
- - Thomas Carruthers
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