I am with you on this one Matt. So many times I have had to hold back on buying the version that is out there. I have been wanting seasons of Twilight Zone for some time.
Now I just want to see full seasons of the new Outer Limits come out to put next to my seasons of the old Outer Limits.
Those shows are awesome, and I do believe they will make their way onto my shelf someday. Another one I'd like to see released is the 80's tv series of Friday the 13th. There was a two part Dracula episode that I have only seen once, but I really enjoyed it. Oh, and the female lead wasn't too bad to look at either
Anyone remember the episode of Night Gallery where this guy had a painting on the wall that depicted a scene involving him...a murder or something...and the painting kept changing throughout the episode as he kept trying to cover his own dirty tracks? My memory is fuzzy here, I was just a child then. Ultimately he was brought to justice by some malevolent creature, I think, but the thing was...he was watching the scene unfold by watching the ever-changing painting on the wall! So, he'd look at the painting with fear in his eyes, and see a creature approaching the door...then, seconds later, we hear heavy knocking on the door itself...
Anyway, that was my favorite episode of Night Gallery. Scared the sh*!# out of me as a kid.
That's the one with Roddy McDowell, isn't it? I think that was the pilot episode. Very creepy! Wasn't someone else in the house (the chauffer?) messing with him and changing the painting? And at the end the painting changes on the second guy?
This message has been edited by JohnGardner61 on Mar 28, 2004 7:02 PM
First Aired November 8, 1969
Production Code 26562
Writer Rod Serling
Director Boris Sagal
Guest Stars: Roddy McDowall (as Jeremy Evans) Ossie Davis (as Osmond Portifoy) George Macready (as Hendricks)
More Cast & Crew
Synopsis
A black-sheep nephew murders his ailing uncle for the inheritance only to find some some disturbing changes in the old man's painting of the family graveyard.
This message has been edited by JohnGardner61 on Mar 28, 2004 7:09 PM
....the episode which you speak of, was from the PILOT movie of "night gallery"...i saw this in the late 60's when it originally aired....i was about 11 at the time,and i had nightmares about paintings in my room coming to life!.....this movie is still shown on cable from time to time....its probably available on video also......another segment in the movie had joan crawford playing a blind woman,and i believe it was steven spielberg's first directing jobs.......brian.....
What it was, and what earned it an undisputed place in the History of Television, was ground breaking .
"Twilight Zone" did many, many things that had not been seen on TV before. It really did push the envelope. Problem is, there was not much of an envelope to push. Most of the episodes are composed of long setups for punchlines that would have been better served with a lot less in front of them. This became even more the case when the show was (unwisely) expanded to an hour.
In this case (and only in this case) "Night Gallery" was a better idea. With several segments per episode, each was allowed to be as long or as short as it needed to be. "Twilight Zone" never did a multiple segment episode, so each story had to fill (minus credits and commercials) a full half hour, or a full hour. Many -- perhaps even most, if I am being unkind -- are padded. Virtually all shows from that vintage seem slow and stiff from our 21st Century vantage -- but "Twilight Zone" seems especially so.
You may now summon the villagers and light the torches.
The Twilight Zone holds a place in my heart, even though it came on twenty some odd years before I discovered it. When I was in my early teens, the local PBS station played Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents without commercial every evening. Over that summer, I would stay up late and thrill to each episode.
I have found it harder to watch those episodes now. But to my 13/14-year-old mind those black and white episodes were great.
I remember watching an old episope of The Outer Limits, about some insect-like aliens that had human faces. I think they were supposed to be criminals from the planet they came from. Anyway, they were pretty creepy looking to me as a kid.
Ah, that was quite a classic! I can hear Roddy McDowall's sinister character still calling for Ossie Davis.... Oh, Portifoy! I really hope that one day someone will take the initiative to release these gems on dvd. I have a few of the originally released Colombia House club videos but dvd would really be better.
THE CEMETERY. A black sheep nephew murders his ailing uncle for the inheritance only to find some disturbing changes in the old man's painting of the family graveyard. Cast: Roddy McDowall, Ossie Davis, George Macready.
Just as a useless tidbit; the original painting for this show was featured in an issue of TV Guide a few weeks back where it was reportedly sold at some auction for $27,000!
I remember watching an old episope of The Outer Limits, about some insect-like aliens that had human faces. I think they were supposed to be criminals from the planet they came from. Anyway, they were pretty creepy looking to me as a kid.
i bought the "Twilight Zone Companion" a few years ago. It has great insight into how Rod Serling worked.
I, myself, think he was a great writer. I also have much respect for Alfred Hitchcock.
Oh, and I liked Outer Limits, too. TNT introduced me to it in the early '90s. I was into b-movies at that time. I'd watch TNT's monster movie on Saturday night and then catch Sandra Bernhard's Reel Wild Cinema on USA Sunday night. Man, those were the days...
You may now summon the villagers and light the torches.
Where's my lighter fluid?
I'm a huge fan of The Twilight Zone. Love it. Out of the five years it was on (and I've probably seen each episode close to ten times) I'd say three years were stellar. So many stories that, to this day, I still get wrapped up in...even though I know how it ends! I will say that Season Four(where the show went to an hour long format for a while) was not my favorite; partially because they rarely made their way to syndication and partly because they do feel awfully padded. The last season was not it's best, although there are still gems to be found such as "In Praise Of Pip" with Jack Klugman and Bill Mumy, "The Masks," the classic "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet," "The Jepardy Room" with Martin Landau, "The Last Night Of A Jockey" with Mickey Rooney, and "The Long Morrow." And, although not created for TZ, the French short film "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge" is chilling as the final episode of the series.
Of the anthology shows of it's time (The Outer Limits and Alfred Hitchcock Presents ... among them), it holds up the best for me. Alfred Hitchock Presents ... feels so very dated that it's become nearly unwatchable to me. Outer Limits, being such a TZ fan, always paled in comparison.
Matt Reed
This message has been edited by MattReed on Mar 28, 2004 10:13 PM
It tells us a lot about the paucity of "serious" science fiction and horror shows that "Twilight Zone" and "The Outer Limits" are always lumped together. "Twilight Zone" tried (mostly) for an intellectual approach, which "The Outer Limits" only occasionaly rose above its "monster of the week" motif.
Both shows were good at what they did, in their time and place, and it is perhaps difficult to look back and realize just how scary "The Outer Limits" was considered in its day. When the episode "The Architects of Fear" was shown, some local affiliates blocked out the terrifying features of the monster:
That must have been one hell of an episode, because I saw it on reruns here many years later, and it's stuck with me. I couldn't tell you about any of the other episodes, but that one creeped me out (ok, I was only little at the time, but it was very scary).
Funny how it's stuck with so many of us, of different ages and backgrounds.
____________________________________________
You are a god among insects. Never let anyone tell you different.
Well, when I was 5 I was scared shitless by the actress who played Harry Mudd's wife on a Trek re-run.
When Salem's Lot 1st aired on HBO I couldn't sleep in the dark for a week!
To JB's point, I think I'm more in love with the recollection of how I felt at the time I first saw those episodes, rather than in love with the actual quality of the shows themselves.
A lot of the shows we loved as kids are virtually unwatchable today as adults. For example, there was a Sid and Marty Croft marathon on cable a few years back. I was so psyched to watch it, as I loved those shows as a kid! Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, Land of the Lost, the Bugaloos, Lidsville...couldn't wait to see them.
Well, I think I lasted all of fifteen minutes! It was astoundingly, appallingly bad! Wretched stuff.
Some things are best left in the closets of our childhood memories...
...but I still love The Twilight Zone!!!
What's everyone favorite episodes? Here's a few of mine, in no particular order:
The Bewitchin' Pool, where two kids (Sport and Jeff) escaped their neglectful, divorcing parents by swimming to the bottom of the swimming pool and emerging in a Huck Finn type of setting where there were no adults, except for a kindly matriarch named Auntie...
The episode with Burgess Meredith, where he portrays a nebbish fanatical reader who, as the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust, has all of the time in the world to indulge in his passion...until he stumbles on some rubble at the library and something happens to his glasses...
The one with the old man, Hider Simpson, and his faithful coon hound Rip, who find themselves on a journey to the afterlife after a fateful hunt and encounter angels along the way, both good and bad...
The episode where three astronauts return from a space mission only to discover that something happened while they were "up there," and maybe they weren't meant to come back, as one by one they each discover...
and lastly, the episode entitled "To Serve Man," where we Earthlings are visited by the seemingly benign Kannimits, who communicate telepathically and give us a book whose title has a ghoulish double meaning.
Speaking of scary monsters - the image of the bug-eyed alien at the very end of the credits for TOS of Star Trek used to scare the hell out of me as a kid. It didn't help that TOS used to air here on Channel 11 after midnight, so I would only see it if I was up past my bedtime.
I am NOT kidding when I say this. I clicked this thread, and hit the 'end' key to jump to the bottom and that image flashed on my screen. I got a chill for a split second the moment I saw it.
I guess old habits die hard.......
(edit - damn typos)
vv
This message has been edited by vvalenti on Mar 29, 2004 8:48 AM This message has been edited by vvalenti on Mar 29, 2004 8:43 AM This message has been edited by vvalenti on Mar 29, 2004 8:42 AM
There's another anthology series, about the same time---has anybody watched Boris Karloff's THRILLER? I first read about this show in a book called Fantasy Television in 1978. It sounded great, but I had never heard of it at that time. I finally taped it off Sci-Fi channel in 1998 (they aired it at 5 am, eastern). It ran two seasons. It's a mixed bag in the first season---it was a crime drama, then it became a twisted supernatural show, with a lot of fantastic spooky/noir-ish episodes! Some of it was really ahead of it's time! Robert E. Howard's "Pigeons from Hell" and another episode, "The Incredible Dr. Markesan" are must sees! JG's highest recommendation!
My all time fave was the one where the old woman is getting calls from her dead husband - that scarred me so bad as a kid that I almost crapped my pants.
And then, of course, I love the big ones, like, "To Serve Man" and "Time Enough At Last".
I love the one about the old hillbilly and his dog that you mention - love it. Being a Dean Stockwell fan, I love the one he's in, tho' it wasn't the best episode.
I'll have to go home and think about it, but I have a lot of faves... the thing I really loved about Twilight Zone was the way it jumped around from genre to genre, like kids playing dress-up - you know, one week, a civil war story, the next, an urban crime drama, the next, a space story, then something from WWII, then you're off to the mountains of Europe. Awesome - everything creative I do in life is shaped by my childhood obsession with that show. Love it.
"And, although not created for TZ, the French short film "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge" is chilling as the final episode of the series. - Matt Reed"
I suspect Matt is confusing an excellent film we saw in college with the actual last episode of TZ, which actually was a tribute to the popular "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" which reversed roles and had Shatner tearing up the plane engine on the wing, and the Gremlin pounding frantically on the window.
"So I'm a heel. What of it? That doesn't make me a bad man... or does it? Ha ha ha ha.... >scrunch!<"
"Twilight Zone" did many, many things that had not been seen on TV before. It really did push the envelope. Problem is, there was not much of an envelope to push. Most of the episodes are composed of long setups for punchlines that would have been better served with a lot less in front of them.
*********************************
This reminds me of the Futurama vol 3 set. In one of the deleted scenes Fry is watching a Twilight Zone like show. I think it was called The Chamber Door or something like that. In the show a scientist is mixing together all the DNA of the worst animals on Earth to create the most evil creature in the world. The scientist put it in a machine and out walks a human who says, "It turns out its MAN!"
Fry comments,"I love these 12 second shows."
What it was, and what earned it an undisputed place in the History of Television, was ground breaking .
"Twilight Zone" did many, many things that had not been seen on TV before. It really did push the envelope. Problem is, there was not much of an envelope to push. Most of the episodes are composed of long setups for punchlines that would have been better served with a lot less in front of them."
****************************************
I feel the same way about Star Trek. I still enjoy both TZ and ST
Futurama did a couple of great TZ parodies (as "The Scary Door", IIRC). The other one was where a very Burgess Meredith-looking old man is entering a library after a nuclear war. It's the same setup as the TZ episode where his glasses fall off, and he starts crying "It's not fair! It's not fair!". Then, Futurama takes it to the next step. The man realizes, "Hey, my eyesight's not so bad!". As he starts to read, his eyes fall out. More protestations on fairness, and then "Well, at least I can steal read brail!". Then his hands fall off.
Cut to Bender watching on the couch: "Cursed by his own hubris!"
And JB's assessment of TZ reminds me of Futurama's Fry describing Star Trek: "You know...79 episodes? Maybe 30 good ones?"
