Time to top off this mindbendingly insane year with a few hours in The Zone (though an awful lot of 2012 felt pretty Zonish to me...)
To start 2013 off right, SyFy will air 90 episodes for its New Year's Twilight Zone marathon (up from 81 last year), starting 8:00 AM on 12/31 and ending at 5:00 AM on 1/2. And, once again, I offer my solid-Serling suggestions on how to tell quality from the clunkers.
Sadly, once again, SyFy is again not airing any of the Season 4 hour-long episodes, which is unfortunate given that Jack Klugman (RIP) gives an excellent performance in Death Ship, but it seems those episodes are shelved for good. It is doubly sad, though, that SyFy is not airing his A Passage for Trumpet. We will, however, get to see two of his excellent episodes: "In Praise of Pip" (7:00 AM 1/1) and "A Game of Pool" (11:30 PM 1/1).
As every year, all ten of Time Magazine's Top Twilight Zone Episodes will be featured; they are in red (a surprising number of which are on New Year's Eve itself since they are usually saved for New Year's Day), along with some lesser known beauties like Ida Lupino's "The Masks" (11:00 PM 12/31) and "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" (11:30 AM 12/31) in green, and finally a few that are not perfect, but have notable performances in blue.
So what follows here is a short list of my favorite episodes which will be aired on Monday, December 31st, linked to a full list of all episodes, with brief descriptions and hopefully not too many spoilers. Celebrity names and other items of interest are bolded and linked.
Happy Zoning!
My Favorites – Short List
(Click the time to jump to the episode description.)
9:00 AM – One For The Angels
10:00 AM – Death's-Head Revisited
11:30 AM – The Sixteen-millimeter Shrine
12:00 PM – Long Live Walter Jameson
3:00 PM – King Nine Will Not Return
3:30 PM – Mr. Denton On Doomsday
4:30 PM – Night Of The Meek
5:00 PM – It's A Good Life
7:30 PM – Eye Of The Beholder
8:00 PM – The Invaders
8:30 PM – Where Is Everybody?
9:00 PM – The Hitch-hiker
9:30 PM – To Serve Man
10:00 PM – Nightmare At 20,000 Feet
10:30 PM – Living Doll
11:00 PM – The Masks
Full List – With Descriptions
8:30 AM – Perchance To Dream – Neat psychodrama with some freaky felinesque dream sequences. Not bad; not great.
9:00 AM – One For The Angels – One of TZ's more successful dark comedies features Ed Wynn as a fast-talking salesman who must use his skills to save a child's life. Features the third of three cameos of Forbidden Planet's Robby the Robot (miniature, in this case) in the TZ; others include "Unc le Simon" (2:30 AM 1/1) and "The Brain Center at Whipple's" (6:30 AM 1/1).
9:30 AM – The Prime Mover – Compulsive gambler cajoles his telekinetically-enabled pal (an enjoyable Buddy Ebsen) into to helping him cheat Vegas. Doesn't work out too well, but could be worse. Moral: Be happy with what you have; know when to quit.
10:00 AM – Death's-Head Revisited – Former Nazi captain's trot down memory lane via Dachau brings him to some unexpected denizens. Top-notch performances by Joseph Schildkraut and Oscar Beregi Jr.
10:30 AM – What You Need – Magical peddler who can give people exactly "what they need" moments before they need it is menaced by a small- time thug. Comeuppance awaits the thug, and the peddler reveals a refreshing hint of cold- bloodedness, uncharacteristic of the Zone. Mixed feelings about this one mostly due to the script's weak dialogue. Based on a superior short story by Lewis Padgett.
11:00 AM – The Jeopardy Room – Defecting ex-KGB Martin Landau has three hours to find the bomb in his hotel room planted by his former Commissar, sniper-rifle-wielding John van Dreelen: If he tries to leave, he gets shot; if he doesn't find the bomb, it goes off (or is he supposed to get shot then, too?). Poor writing, overwrought direction and too many plot holes make this episode unsalvageable even by Landau's typically fine acting.
11:30 AM – The Sixteen-millimeter Shrine – Luminous Ida Lupino as a reclusive aging movie star, immersed in the films of her youth. Sunset Boulevard, served up Zone-style with a bittersweet dose of wish- fulfillment. Score is by Sunset Boulevard's composer/conductor Franz Waxman. Catch Lupino's deft direction in "The Masks" at 11:00 PM.
12:00 PM – Long Live Walter Jameson – TZ's most successful working of the "morality of mortality" theme features fine performances, a strong script and a touch of righteous revenge.
12:30 PM – A Piano In The House – Enchanted ivories reveal uncomfortable secrets; akin to "What's in the Box" (up next) and "A Most Unusual Camera" (6:00 PM 1/1), and slightly better than either.
1:00 PM – What's In The Box – Lame and ridiculous episode about a couple’s bickering leading to accidental murder and capital punishment. Freaky TV predicts it all. There, now you don’t have to watch it and aren’t you glad?
1:30 PM – Black Leather Jackets – Evil leather-clad alien (dressed this way to "blend") falls for local Earth girl in this poor man's Avatar.
2:00 PM – A Nice Place To Visit – Another be-careful-what-you-wish-for morality tale about the true nature of Heaven and Hell. In 1960 it might not have been painfully predictable...
02:30 PM – The 7th Is Made Up Of Phantoms – Spooked National Guard tank crew gets drafted into Custer's 7th Cavalry. Big whoop.
3:00 PM – King Nine Will Not Return – WWII B-25 Captain Robert Cummings finds himself stranded in the desert with only the carcass of his King Nine, lost 17 years before. Is it a hallucination? Time travel? Both? The de rigueur twist ending is now a TZ cliché, but still worth watching for a strong script and Cummings' excellent performance.
3:30 PM – Mr. Denton On Doomsday – Touching old west tale about top-gunslinger-turned-town-drunk finding redemption. Fine performances by Dan Duryea, Martin Landau and Doug McClure.
4:00 PM – The Shelter – "Maple Street" meets the lazy grasshopper. The industrious ant of this tale has built a bomb shelter for his (and ONLY his) family, and his neighbors scoff – until there is an emergency... Bloated prose and one-dimensional characters make this a must-miss.
4:30 PM – Night Of The Meek – Down-and-out department store Santa, Art Carney, loses his job but finds a bag of gifts and plays Santa one last time for the neighborhood kiddies. But is it just an act? Beautiful, touching episode.
5:00 PM – It's A Good Life – One of the most famous episodes (#3 on the Time list) featuring little Billy Mumy as a terrifying child who can create and destroy at will. The brilliant Cloris Leachman is his petrified mother. ("That’s a good thing you did… A real good thing… Now please wish it into the cornfield!").
5:30 PM – Probe 7 Over and Out – Stranded astronaut Richard Basehart, meets hostile alien female on deserted planet. She hurls rocks at him. Or maybe it's just foreplay. Now, what shall we call this place...? (Appropriately rhymes with "dearth.") The same story is better told in "Two" (3:30 AM 1/2).
6:00 PM – A Kind Of Stopwatch – Blabbering bore gets comeuppance via magical timepiece. Even The&nbs p;Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything was better than this turkey.
6:30 PM – Little Girl Lost – Little girl has slipped into another dimension. Can her parents and their conveniently present physicist pal rescue her before the portal closes forever? Decent script but bland acting. Tune in for the final 10 minutes for all you need to know.
7:00 PM – Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up – This was voted 8.5 on the IMDB, but I think it’s dopey and ridiculous. Bus passengers are stranded at a diner – but there is one too many. Oh, and rumor has it that a spacecraft crashed nearby. Give me a break.
7:30 PM – Eye Of The Beholder – A classic (#9 on the Time list) about the relativity of beauty, the lengths we will go to be beautiful – or to at least conform – and the dangers of conformity. Note: the girl at the end (Donna Douglas, of Beverly Hillbillies) is a different actress than the one under the bandages ( Maxine Stuart), but she speaks in her own voice – doing a very good impression of Stuart!
8:00 PM – The Invaders – Agnes Moorehead's virtuoso 25-minute wordless monologue; riveting with a slick twist at the end. #7 on the Time list.
8:30 PM – Where Is Everybody? – Guy finds himself alone in an empty town, with hints of residents recently present (lit cigarette in ashtray, etc.). Eerie and amusing, most worth watching because this is the pilot that sold the series to CBS.
9:00 PM – The Hitch-hiker – A driver keeps seeing the same hitch-hiker thumbing a ride as she heads west…. A deliciously Hitchcockian morality/mortality play about fear and acceptance of the inevitable. #5 on the Time list.
9:30 PM – To Serve Man – Aliens come to earth offering solutions to all the world's woes; their trouble-entendre mission: "To serve man." An undisputed classic, #8 on the Time list.
10:00 PM – Nightmare At 20,000 Feet – "There's a man out on the wing!!" Shatner at his whiteknuckle best. #6 on the Time list.
10:30 PM – Living Doll – "My name is Talky Tina – and you'd better be nice to me!" Telly Savalas takes on June Foray's creepy voiced doll. This one gave me nightmares. #1 on the Time list.
11:00 PM – The Masks – One of the GREAT underrated episodes, and the only TZ episode to be directed by a woman, Ida Lupino (she also stars in “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine” 10:30 AM 12/31 ... hope you caught it! ). A crusty millionaire geezer tells his greedy family he will die before Mardi Gras is over – but they must wear freaky custom masks through the evening if they want to claim their inheritance. Gives the term "know thyself" new meaning....
11:30 PM – I Sing The Body Electric – Sweet story about a robot nanny lovingly bonding with tots.
1 comment:
As always, handy and helpful! I actually look forward to this guide every year like clockwork, so thanks for keeping it up.
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