190401 April 1, 2019

Our Classmates Experienced "The Twilight Zone"

Tommy Towery

LHS '64

    Last week we entered The Twilight Zone, looking back at one of the TV shows that made its mark on our teenage years. I asked you which episodes you remember the best and several of you sent me your choices.

    Spencer Thompson, LHS '64, wrote, "Good Monday Morning and Blessings T. My favorite episode of the Twilight Zone was The Hunt with Arthur Hunnicutt.

    Woody Beck also replied with, "What an interesting coincidence. About two weeks ago I started binge watching reruns of The Twilight Zone on U-tube, and a few days ago I was watching the episode “The Monsters Due on Maple Street”, and thought how relevant for today. Serling tapped into a universal human weakness and how it can lead perversely to tragic outcomes."

    Jim Ballard, LHS '67, "Tommy...I was  moved by your great tribute to Serling's Twilight Zone, arguably the very best of TV; I would say the very best yesterday, today and tomorrow.

    Serling's original Twilight Zone is a Hollywood industry standard that any first rate producer/ director/ writer aspires to today, and (always) fails miserably...Just witness the dreary, lame attempts to imitate TZ over the past few decades, and it becomes a no-brainer that Hollywood will never match the series...Ever !

    Of course, as with anything on the ubiquitous, hypnotic tube, there were a few weak episodes. 

    But I don't agree with some of Stephen King's criticisms in his non-fiction book, "Dance Macabre" ('81)...King is a great writer, but his writing skills rest squarely (and not solely) on the shoulders of many greater writers, such as Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont, both of whom created great scripts for Serling's master showcase. 

    Serling himself was never a light weight either; not only for his great contributions to TZ, but scripts for such great films as "Requiem for a Heavyweight" ('56 & '62), and "Patterns" ('56). "Requiem" ('62) is among the top five films of all time on my list.

    I could write forever about my admiration for both Serling, and the TZ episodes. The very best ones, (and even the ones not so "best" of all the 156 episodes), were nothing less than "morality plays" for all of us. 

    Serling's Twilight Zone was an ingenious secular template for human posterity, brilliantly displayed as "object lessons" on how we should behave (and NOT behave) as human beings. 

    Like Shakespeare, Serling was a "man for all times".

    Among my many favorite episodes, and timely even today (especially today !) was "The Lonely", the very first of the '59/'60 season (after the pilot)...The story of a prisoner sentenced to an asteroid, bonding with a "female" robot, secretly left to him by a supply ship captain...

    "The Lonely" left an indelible, heart-wrenching impression on an 11 year old in 1959, and on an 71 year old, in 2019 ! ...As well as many more episodes to come for the next five seasons after '59."

    Max Kull added, "You already mentioned one of my all time favorites - "Time Enough at Last" with Burgess Meredith.

    Two of my other favorites are "The Hitch-Hiker" with Inger Stevens and "One for the Angels" with Murray Hamilton and the *GREAT* Ed Wynn.

    Cool that we can now easily stream this stuff and re-watch whenever we want.

    Finally Barb Biggs Knott, LHS '66,  wrote in, "Your write-up about the Twilight Zone brought back a lot of memories for me. I still watch it whenever they have the marathons on SY-FY channel. I always enjoy looking at the early acting opportunities featuring so many of our favorite actors and actresses when they were just starting out in the business.  One of my favorite episodes was the one where the old man was dying and all his family gathered around like hawks just waiting so they could inherit his money. He made them all where a mask and they could remove it once he had died. It was called ‘The Masks’. But there were so many other great episodes as well.  I don’t think a revamped version of Rod Sterling’s original series  will ever have the same impact on me."

    So, for your enjoyment, I present to you a Youtube video of what one person thinks were the 10 greatest "The Twilight Zone" episodes.