Oh, lots of favorites. The one with the best ironic punchline for my money is "Time Enough at Last", with Burgess Meredith as the seemingly sole survivor of an Atomic Holocaust. It was the eighth episode of the series, and it may be the prototypical "Zone". "Eye of the Beholder" is classic stuff, especially if you haven't anticipated the gag by the reveal at the end. "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" is fantastic, and in a similar vein though with more of a comedic edge to it "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up"."To Serve Man" has been so well parodied on "The Simpsons" and the like, it's easy to forget what a great episode it was. "The Invaders" and "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" are great. "Nothing in the Dark", with Robert Redford as Death coming gently to Galdys Cooper's shut-in, is another all-time fave with one of the most endearing endings. "The After Hours" with the mannequins, freaked me out for years of shopping in department stores. "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" is a fun twist on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, with another classic punchline. "The Dummy" and "The Living Doll" with Talky Tina terrorizing the abusive Telly Savalas, of course! "The Hitch-Hiker" is another prototypical episode.
And on and on and on. Most all of 'em were at least watchable, and an amazingly high percentage are classics of some sort. Incredibly influential on generations of Sci-Fi, for the big and small screen. Still fun to watch and re-watch.
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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
Last edited by Holden Pike; 10-21-2008 at 08:42 AM.
I was absolutely fascinated in the Twilight Zone when I was a kid, but unfortunately haven't seen any re-runs of late.
I'm not great on the episode names, like HP is, but there was a couple that left an eery feeling with me. One of them was about the 'gaps in time' where some people became trapped in... The Langoliers reminded me of this ep. There was some great, classic thought-provoking stuff that yes, perhaps was ahead of its time and paved the way for sci-fi movies later.
That was actually an episode from the "Twilight Zone" series from the '80s, not the original '59-'65 classic. It was called "A Matter of Minutes", and it was one of the best shows of that newer series. Adolph Ceasar (A Soldier's Story) played the supervisor of the workman who reassemble the Universe minute by minute, cleverly explaining why small details like your car keys can be seemingly misplaced in plain sight, only to have you find them minutes later right where you had left them.
There were a handful of really good episodes from that 1985 "Zone" series, including a couple of the classic episodes updated. But in general, it was a disappointment, and sorely missed the presence and writing and editorial genius of Rod Serling.
Well, since I was born in 65, anything I would've seen would be classified as re-runs. I may have mixed those up altho that was definitely the outline of that ep. The other one I remember very vaguely was one where everything stopped; people, vehicles and the like.
I was born in 1970, so I came to all of the classic "Twilight Zones" much later than their original airdates, obviously.
And yes, the other episode you're remembering is from the '80s series too: "A Little Peace & Quiet". Melinda Dillon (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) played a housewife who was fed up with the noise and commotion of her day-to-day life. After discovering a mysterious amulet in her garden, she finds that when she yells "Shut up!", the entire world around her stops. She was enjoying it at first, but of course it goes horribly wrong. A nuclear attack is launched on the U.S., and she stops the world just before the missles explode, leaving her trapped in her quiet isolation with the only option being to let time start again and everybody die. As a trivia note, Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream) directed that episode, the second of that newer series.
Last edited by Holden Pike; 07-03-2003 at 10:38 PM.
ok, now I may not remember the entire episode, but I don't recall any woman as the main character, and as I recall this particular ep was in black & white. So.. I went for a search... It could be the ep titled "Where Is Everybody?"
No, that has nothing to do with time stopping. "Where is Everybody?" was the pilot for the original series. A man is alone in an abandoned town, and in the end it turns out he was an astronaut going through isolation training, and his addled mind was creating the town. The reality comes back in after he starts pushing a crosswalk button on main street, which is actually the panic button in the isolation booth.
But there is an original episode with time stoppage: "A Kind of Stopwatch". Guy in a bar is given a stopwatch that freezes everything around him. He's having fun with it for a while, then decides to rob a bank. While he's wheeling out the cash, the watch falls to the floor and breaks, leaving him alone in a frozen world forever. I actually prefer the twist in the newer series, with the time freezer being stuck facing Armageddon. I'll always remember the final shot, as she wanders through the frozen street, all the people looking skyward in horror at the approaching missles. A well made episode. Plus, I've always loved Melinda Dillon, who in addition to Close Encounters co-starred in Bound for Glory, Absence of Malice and of course A Christmas Story.
Fox may be thinking of "Still Valley." Did it involve the Civil War? If memory serves me correctly, a confederate soldier goes into a small town, and everyone in town is frozen, including all the union soldiers who were marching into town. An old man with a magic spell book had cast a spell on everyone. I don't remember how it ended.
I started watching the old series when I was in high school in the 80's. A few years back when the Sci-Fi channel did a marathon, I taped almost every episode on 12 vhs tapes. I wish I had the entire collection on DVD, but the entire series is sooooooo expensive. Maybe I'll take my favorite episodes from the tapes and burn them onto DVDs, but then I'll have all the commercials.
Holden already mentioned several of my favorites, but here's a list of the ones I really liked:
Where is Everybody? - pilot - This one had me fooled And When the Sky Was Opened - WWI pilot flies through cloud to WWII The Shelter - "Simpsons" parodied. One bomb shelter; neighbors get nasty. Five Characters in Search of an Exit - A pilot, hobo, bagpiper, ballerina, and clown stuck in a cylnder with no memory. Eye of the Beholder - classic Long Distance Call - Creepy call from dead Grandma The Midnight Sun - The earth is moving closer to the sun, or is it? The After Hours - What mannequins do in their spare time Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up - Holden mentioned - classic Person or Persons Unknown - A never ending cycle of identity crises I Shot an Arrow Into the Air - possibly inspired Serling to write "Planet of the Apes" The Hitch-Hiker - classic Mirror Image - your double trying to take over Stopover in a Quiet Town - Don't drink too much at parties, you never know where you'll end up. The Living Doll - "I'm Talking Tina, and I'm going to kill you." To Serve Man - Semantics is everything The Monsters are Due on Maple Street - "Who do you talk to with that Ham radio? None of us have ever seen it?" The Last Flight - Three pilots crash their expiremental jet-fighter...no, two pilots...no, one pilot...what jet-fighter?
There are several more on my tapes that I marked, but based on the titles, I can't remember what they were about. I'll have to re-watch them.
"Still Valley" ends with the Confederate Soldier taking the book that casts the spell back to his camp. He finally convinces his commanding Officers that it will work and they'll win the War, but as he starts to read aloud he realizes he'll have to embrace The Devil and renounce God for the spell to work. He stops reading and throws the book onto the fire.
I'm sure it was "A Kind of Stopwatch" he was remembering, not "Still Valley".
You may be right, Holden. I guess I didn't read that part of your thread and didn't see you had already mentioned that episode. "Still Valley" was the first thing that came to my mind, but since Fox said, "cars," you're probably right.
I put an asterisk next to several titles on my tapes, indicating that I liked them, but I can't, for the life of me, remember what some of them are about. Maybe you can help me.
Twenty-Two Static A World of Difference It's a Good Life Nick of Time
Also, I have a few episode's in mind, but I can't think of the titles:
The little boy, who was also in Long Distance Call, gets anything he wants just by thinking about it. Everyone is afraid of him. They re-did it in the 80's movie.
The man who dictates a description of a woman into a machine, and she appears. We find out at the end that his wife had been dictated as well, but when he starts to recreate her after destroying her, he decides against it and dictates the mistress to be his wife instead.
A confused actor thinks he is living the life of his character. He keeps slipping from the character's life to his real life in front of the camera. He doesn't like the pressures of his real life, and in the end, he slips into his character's life for good.
If anyone can, I'm sure HP can...
We never seem to get the good shows re-run here. Or maybe if they have, I've never had a chance to see them. Been a long time.
Now, I don't have a great memory, so I'm not sure what ep it was. All I remember was that there seemed to be people and vehicles all frozen in time and there was this guy walking around. That's it, but it was black and white. Just remember that it was kinda creepy.
That was actually an episode from the "Twilight Zone" series from the '80s, not the original '59-'65 classic. It was called "A Matter of Minutes", and it was one of the best shows of that newer series. Adolph Ceasar (A Soldier's Story) played the supervisor of the workman who reassemble the Universe minute by minute, cleverly explaining why small details like your car keys can be seemingly misplaced in plain sight, only to have you find them minutes later right where you had left them.
There were a handful of really good episodes from that 1985 "Zone" series, including a couple of the classic episodes updated. But in general, it was a disappointment, and sorely missed the presence and writing and editorial genius of Rod Serling.
THAT SERIES WAS PRETTY GOOD THE "A MATTER OF MINUTES" EPISODE WAS EXCELLENT.
THERE'S THREE CREEPY ONE'S I DON'T THINK ANY ONE MENTIONED
I HAVE A TAPE OF THE LOST EPISODES THAT I'M SURE IS ON
DVD BY NOW.
I'M BAD WITH THE TITLES BUT I THINK IT'S,
PERCHANCE TO DREAM : THIS GUY IS AFRAID TO SLEEP BECAUSE
THE LAST TIME HE DID SOMEONE WAS TRYING
TO KILL HIM IN HIS DREAM.
THE HOWLING MAN : MONKS AT A MONESTARY HAVE A MAN LOCKED UP
THEY SAY IS THE DEVIL, HE TRIES TO CONVINCE
A MAN WHO WONDERS IN TO LET HIM OUT.
WHO'S TELLING THE TRUTH.
LONG LIVE WALTER JAMISON : WHERE A MAN CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHY
HIS SON-N-LAW KNOWS SO MUCH
ABOUT ALL THESE HISTORICAL EVENTS,
IT'S BECAUSE HE WAS THERE.
AND THERE'S MORE IF I CAN REMEMBER AND SOME ONE'S THAT WHERE SUPPOSEDLY NEVER AIRED OR ONLY DID ONCE(SOME RACIAL STUFF)THAT WAS BANNED BUT IS ON VHS AND I'M SURE DVD.
"Twenty-Two"
A woman, a professional dancer, in a hospital keeps imagining she's being led to the morgue, room 22, where a nurse tells her "Room for one more, Honey". The doctor and her agent tell her it's nothing but a bad dream, but she can't shake it. She finally leaves the hospital for the airport, and when she boards the plane, the stewardess is the nurse from her visions. She says "Room for one more, Honey." She runs from the plane in terror, which explodes on take off.
"Static"
A bitter old man fed up with television gets his old radio out of storage and finds it recieves programs from his younger days, but only when he's alone. A woman he was engaged to but never married and became an old maid thinks he's imaging it all. Eventually he gives the radio away to a pawn shop, but his old finace retrieves it. It still works, and when he shows up, they're young again, and given a second chance to have their lives together.
"A World of Difference" This is the one about the actor who can't distiguish between his life and his character's, and when he learns the actor-self is a broken-down alcoholic, he pleads to the heavens to be allowed to continue as the character. The set is dismantled, he becomes that character forever, and the actor vanishes.
"It's a Good Life" This is the one with the young boy (Bill Mumy, who went on to be Will Robinson on "Lost in Space") with mysterious powers who holds the terrified small town at his every whim. And yes, it was re-made by Joe Dante (Gremlins) as one of the four episodes in the 1983 Twilight Zone: The Movie.
"Nick of Time"
This is the other William Shatner episode, the most famous being "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" with the man seeing the monster on the wing of the aircraft (also part of Twilight Zone: The Movie). In "Nick of Time", Shatner and his new wife stop in a small town while their car is being repaired. They grab lunch at a diner, which has a novelty fortune-telling machine on each table, complete with a bobbing Devil's head. You put in a penny, ask a question, and it spits out a card with an answer. He becomes convinced that it can predict the future, and he begins feverishly depending on it for every decision. His wife finally reasons him out of it and they get their car, but then we see another couple, a little desheveled and desperate looking, enter, sit down at a booth and ask "Will we be able to leave today?", and are dejected when they get a 'no'. There was apparently no reasonable half of that couple.
"A World of His Own"
This is the other one you were asking about, where the man can make anything real by describing it into his dictation machine. Then to make it disappear, he throws the tape into the fireplace. His wife catches him with another woman, who seems to have vanished. He tells her how he did this, and even though he demonstartes this ability to his wife by making an elephant appear then disappear, she wants to have him comitted. He then takes an envelope from a safe that contains the tape describing her, throws it into the fire, and she disappears. He starts to redescribe her into the machine, but then reconsiders and makes the mistress his new wife.
Last edited by Holden Pike; 07-05-2003 at 09:33 AM.
I have recollection of all you described except Twenty-Two and Static. I actually thought the title was Twenty-Two Static because I ran out of room on the tape label and wrote it that way. I had an asterisk next to it, meaning I liked it.
Funny, even though you've described it, and I marked it, I still don't remember Twenty-Two. Was it shot in a different format, like Long Distance Call? Do you know what I'm talking about? There were a few episodes that almost look like they were filmed live. Long Distance Call has this look, as well as one about a used car salesman.
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