TZ Promo: “To Serve Man” (3/02/1962)

Season 3, Episode 24 (#89 overall)
Cayuga Production # 4807

“This is the way nightmares begin… or perhaps end: very simple, direct, unadorned. Incredible, and yet so terribly real that even while they are happening, we live them, digest them, and assimilate them.”

That’s Michael Chambers, who we meet lounging uncomfortably in a small compartment in a spacecraft. Chambers is addressing us in voice-over, one of the only times in the series’ five-year run in which a character provides narration (off the top of my head, this device was also used in season two’s “King Nine Will Not Return” and season five’s “The Long Morrow;” there might be a couple others). But it gets better: at the end of the episode, Chambers will break the fourth wall and actually look directly at us while he speaks. Cool!


“To Serve Man” is one of The Twilight Zone’s best-remembered (and most notorious) episodes, and it’s really pretty impossible to discuss it without spoiling the surprise. I’ll try, but I make no promises. Written by Rod Serling (adapted from a short story by Damon Knight; Serling adapted many stories in the show’s third season; a sign of his growing fatigue as the show’s primary contributor of scripts) and directed by Richard L. Bare, “To Serve Man” tells the tale (in flashback) of earth’s first close encounter with an alien species, and it’s a doozy.


The Kanamits arrive en masse and do NOT attack. Rather, they guide the nations of the earth to near-immediate world peace. Almost overnight, hunger, famine and war are rendered obsolete. Diseases are cured, military forces are disbanded, and an apparent new millennium dawns. The Kanamits proceed to institute an exchange program, in which thousands of earthlings make the long space voyage to their home world for a visit.


Spoiler alert: they ain’t coming back.

The side story involves a team of government code crackers, led by Chambers (well played by Lloyd Bochner, with that wonderful voice of his), who are charged with decoding the alien’s language. Their only help in this endeavor is a book, left behind by the Kanamit who addresses the United Nations upon arriving. Halfway through the episode, they decipher the book’s title: To Serve Man. It appears that the Kanamits are just as altruistic as they appear.


You know the punchline. I don’t need to say it.

The various Kanamits seen in the episode are played by Richard Kiel (all 7+ feet of him!), who is probably best known as the villainous Jaws from the James Bond film series. My pal Bill Huelbig scored me an autographed picture of Kiel a few months ago; it’s worth sharing again:


Oh, and for the second week in a row, the series graces us with a TZ babe. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Susan Cummings!


I have one gripe about “To Serve Man,” and it’s admittedly pretty minor. The Kanamits do not speak with their mouths, since they communicate telepathically, which means that their dialogue was recorded separately and added in post-production. Joseph Ruskin, whom we saw in season two’s “The Man in the Bottle,” provided the voices, but he isn’t the problem. The issue is a technical one; specifically, the quality of the recorded dialogue is downright terrible, muffled and hard to comprehend (oddly, Bochner’s voiceover narration sounds crystal clear). Perhaps this was an intentional effect designed to make the Kanamit voices sound strange, but the execution just plain sucks. It sticks out like a sore thumb, especially within the otherwise-clean remastered audio found on the blu-ray set.


“To Serve Man” makes effective use of Jerry Goldsmith’s scores from previous TZ offerings “The Invaders” and “Back There.” This may be the only time in the show’s five-year run that a stock-scored episode pulled all its music from a single composer’s work. Both Goldsmith scores have been released multiple times on both vinyl and CD, but unfortunately every single release is now out of print. But fear not! The scores can be found on Image Entertainment’s season two Definitive DVD set (and it’s more recent blu-ray counterpart). Oh, and the specific cues used in “To Serve Man” are of course available on the season three set(s).



Forbidden Planet alert! While the flying saucer shots are culled from the Ray Harryhausen classic Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, the life-sized underside of the ship and retracting stairway ramp is a leftover chunk of the United Planets C-57D Space Cruiser. We’ve seen this set piece before (in season one’s “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street”) and we’ll see it again (in season four’s “Death Ship”). Man, Forbidden Planet is the gift that just keeps on giving.


The Kanamit, one of my favorite aliens from the entire series, has been well-represented from a merchandise standpoint. Sideshow Collectibles released an amazing 14" deluxe action figure around ten years ago (I have it, but I've never opened it... I was planning on unveiling it for my planned "Kanamit Week," which fell through. My Kanamit is in storage someplace... one of these days I'll dig it out and spotlight it). More recently, Bif Bang Pow! has released (or is about to release) five distinct Kanamit-related items: Kanamit bobblehead (black and white or limited edition color variant), Kanamit action figure, Kanamit lunchbox, and a Kanamit cookbook journal. There's also a "To Serve Man" apron (available here) that I'd love to get my hands on one of these days.



What can I say? “To Serve Man” is an absolute classic, brilliantly executed and frankly unforgettable. It’s attained pop culture immortality and, as such, has been endlessly parodied in film and TV (most notably on The Simpsons, which has spoofed many TZ episodes over the years). It’s the “Eye of the Beholder” of season three, no question, and it lives quite comfortably in my top ten favorites list.

Next week, “The Fugitive” introduces to a kind alien, beloved by children, on the run from ominous men in black. Steven Spielberg totally ripped it off when he made E.T., but the original is better. Tune in.

TZ Promo: “The Midnight Sun” (11/17/1961)

Season 3, Episode 10 (#75 overall)

Cayuga Production # 4818

50 years ago tonight, The Twilight Zone offered yet another glimpse of the end of the world. It wasn’t a nuclear war, or a worldwide plague, or even a planet-wide uncreation courtesy of Anthony Fremont. No, this was something new.


“The Midnight Sun,” written by Rod Serling and directed by Anton Leader, finds the earth losing its celestial bearings and settling into a collision course with the sun. Predictably, society disintegrates quickly as people prepare for a fiery end. Our story focuses on one woman, an artist named Norma, who opts to wait it out in her high rise apartment.

Ms. Nettleton, sweatin' to the oldies.

Lois Nettleton is fine in the lead; unfortunately, her efforts are undermined by the terrible acting by everyone else. Most offensive is Betty Garde, who is awkward and grating as Norma’s landlady and friend to the end (her death scene is embarrassingly bad). Even the radio announcer, who loses his cool live on the air, is completely unconvincing.

100% pure ham. Pre-cooked for your convenience.

What does work, besides Nettleton’s performance and Serling’s script, is the clever way in which the oppressive heat is depicted. Aside from the usual spray-on sweat and drenched clothing, special effects are employed to drive the point home: a mercury thermometer explodes before our eyes, and Norma’s oil paintings melt right off their canvases.

I'll stop the world and melt with you.

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.

And that twist ending ---- pure genius. The following picture is as close to a spoiler as you're getting outta me.


I’ve historically counted “The Midnight Sun” in my top ten favorites, but I’m not feeling quite as warmly toward it these days (har har). It’s definitely got a lot to offer, but when truly great episodes like “The Lonely” and “Mirror Image" (not to mention “Eye of the Beholder"!) are rated LOWER on my list…. yeah, it might be time for some further revisions.



PAPERBACK MEMORIES


“The Midnight Sun” is one of six season three episodes adapted into short story form by Rod Serling in New Stories from The Twilight Zone (the third in a trilogy of such books). As previously recounted, I acquired these paperback gems shortly after discovering the series in the early 80’s, so in several instances I read the after-the-fact story version before I ever saw the actual episode. “The Midnight Sun” is one such case.


THE MUSIC

Nathan Van Cleave (year unknown).

“The Midnight Sun” is graced with an excellent original score by Nathan Van Cleave. Employing a small five-piece ensemble (bass flute, two organs and two pianos), Van Cleave creates an eerie dread-tinged soundscape that gradually builds to a near-frenzy as the sun finally overtakes the earth (or, at least, appears to). Like many excellent TZ scores, “The Midnight Sun” has never been released on vinyl, tape or CD… but it CAN be acquired, thanks to the isolated music track Image Entertainment included in both the season three Definitive Edition DVD and blu-ray sets. It’s on my iPod, playing as I type this.

Next week: Nothing says Thanksgiving like… black magic?

TZ Promo: “Deaths-head Revisited” (11/10/1961)

Season 3, Episode 9 (#74 overall)

Cayuga Production # 4804

Two weeks ago, The Twilight Zone gave us a goosebumps-inducing tale involving a vengeful ghost. Tonight, we celebrate the 50th birthday of a different kind of ghost story. However, this time we’ll see more justice than vengeance.


“Deaths-head Revisited,” written by Rod Serling and directed by Don Medford, introduces us to one of the Zone’s most deplorable characters: Captain Gunther Lutze, a former Nazi officer who has the unbelievable gall to visit the ruins of a concentration camp to indulge his nostalgia (does this make him Martin Sloan's evil counterpart?). Playing Lutze is Oscar Beregi (last seen in season two’s “The Rip Van Winkle Caper." He’ll appear again in season four’s “Mute”), and it’s a spot-on performance. He manages to create a vivid portrayal of an arrogant, wicked bastard without even an ounce of scenery chewing.


We are also introduced to one of The Twilight Zone’s most compelling and sympathetic characters: Arnold Becker, a concentration camp ghost, played with convincing frailty (tinged with righteous anger) by Joseph Schildkraut (probably best remembered as Anne Frank’s father in 1959’s The Diary of Anne Frank). He'll appear again later this season in another outstanding episode, “The Trade-Ins.”


The two play off one another marvelously. The characters are clearly archetypal, meant to embody larger collectives, but both are nuanced enough that we invest in them as individuals (by contrast, a similar exercise in season five’s “The Encounter” won’t be as successful because those characters are more stereotype than archetype). The whole affair is a bit of a loaded argument, of course: Nazi versus Jew. Who will prevail, especially in a cosmic justice-oriented universe like The Twilight Zone? The episode manages to avoid coming off as a black and white argument for human rights, thanks to the aforementioned performances, plus a great Serling script. Mention should also be made of Medford’s directing… there are several shots that elevate the episode above the standard “talking head” TV approach (the dizzy POV shot with Lutze staring up the somber Dachau ghosts is quite nice). The episode looks particularly glorious on a big screen in high definition (thanks to Samsung and Image Entertainment for making this possible in my living room).


It’s not much of a spoiler to note that Lutze gets exactly what’s coming to him in the end. Watching Becker maneuvering him toward his unfortunate destiny…. well, that’s the fun. Odd using a word like “fun” in reference to such a deadly serious episode, which deals with such deadly serious themes, but there you go. “Deaths-head Revisited” is another one of those episodes in which everything works beautifully, and it’s one of my top 20 favorites.


THE MUSIC

“Deaths-head Revisited” is another stock-scored episode, which means existing cues from the CBS Music Library were re-purposed (versus commissioning a new, original score). The dominant cue, which appears throughout the episode, is called “Mysterious Storm” by Jerry Goldsmith. This cue, along with lots of other early Goldsmith TV work, can be found on Jerry Goldsmith: The Early Years from Prometheus Records.

Of course, "Mysterious Storm" (along with the rest of the music used in the episode) can also be accessed in isolated form on both the Definitive Edition DVD and more recent blu-ray release of season three from Image Entertainment. Folks, I'm gonna keep plugging these blu-rays till every last one of you caves in and buys 'em.

Next week: Damn, is it hot in here, or what? Hoo-boy!

TZ Favorites: A Minor Mutation.

Back on 11/03/2009, I wrote the following: “A few months back, I compiled a list of my top 40 all-time favorites. This list is not set in stone; in fact, as I endeavor to re-watch the entire series over the next five years (viewing each episode on its 50th anniversary), my preferences will almost certainly change.”

The combined experience of re-watching each episode and writing this blog has indeed changed my preferences, though probably not as extremely as I might have thought (with one major exception; see below). Additionally, I’m only two seasons into the project (well, almost), so things will likely change even more over the next three years. However, as of today, the following are my Top 20 favorite episodes. Top 10 favorites are in all caps. Notes and thoughts follow.


Season 1:
Walking Distance
The Lonely
PERCHANCE TO DREAM
AND WHEN THE SKY WAS OPENED
THIRD FROM THE SUN
THE HITCH-HIKER
Mirror Image
Long Live Walter Jameson
The After Hours

Season 2:
The Eye of the Beholder
SHADOW PLAY
THE OBSOLETE MAN

Season 3:
A GAME OF POOL
It’s a Good Life
Death’s-Head Revisited
THE MIDNIGHT SUN
TO SERVE MAN

Season 4:
In His Image
DEATH SHIP

Season 5:
In Praise of Pip


First off, let me say that it’s MUCH harder to narrow the list down to 20 (versus 40, which I did last time… I may go back to 40 next time I do this). Harder still was choosing 10 favorites from the final 20. I’m still not 100% comfortable with the list, but close. Let’s say 93% and move on.

The most monumental change concerns “Long Live Walter Jameson.” For years I’ve counted it as my all-time favorite, but for some reason I’m less enamored of it these days. Don’t get me wrong, I still love it (and it’s still in my top 20), but… well, tastes change. I knew going in that this was possible (see above), but for my #1 episode to drop clear out of the top 10? Talk about a fall from grace.

“The After Hours,” which was erroneously omitted entirely from the previous list, now resides in the lower half of the top 20. It’s not quite top 10 material right now, but who knows? I really dug it when I re-watched it recently (on 3/17/11, the 50th anniversary of its original repeat telecast). Who knows what the future holds? A really cool Marsha the Mannequin action figure from Bif Bang Pow! might be all it takes to push it up into the top 10.

Look at how much the list skews toward season 1. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: episode for episode, ounce for ounce, season 1 is BY FAR the best season of the series. Of course every season has its gems, but season 1 is practically uniform in its brilliance. If it weren't for that goddamned "Mr. Bevis"....

Three episodes have asserted themselves sufficiently in my mind (or heart, or both, or whatever makes us compose favorites lists) to achieve top 10 status. They are “Third from the Sun,” “The Obsolete Man,” and “To Serve Man.” Welcome to greatness, you three.

Sadly, this means that three episodes had to drop out of the top 10 to make room. These are “In His Image,” “In Praise of Pip,” and the aforementioned “Long Live Walter Jameson.” All three are still in the top 20, so I clearly still think very highly of them. No tears. And who knows? Again, I have no doubt that this list will change in the future.

TZ Promo: “Shadow Play” (5/05/1961)

“Shadow Play” (5/05/1961)
Season Two, Episode 26 (62 overall)
Cayuga Production # 173-3657

We’ve all been there. Things go horribly awry, and we feel the bottom drop out from beneath our feet, either by our own folly or by external influence. Our tiny human brains throb, perhaps only for a moment, with a fervent hope that what we’re experiencing is simply a dream or, more appropriately, a nightmare. It seems possible enough, especially given that, no matter how bizarre or senseless our dreams are, they seem to make perfect sense while we’re having them. For those slumbering hours, our dreams are the only reality we are conscious of. To confine our worst case scenarios to the dream world is a perfectly reasonable desire, from a self-preservation standpoint.


“Shadow Play,” written by Charles Beaumont and directed by John Brahm, asks the age-old question: which is more real, our day-to-day reality or the life we live in dreams? Beaumont’s own “Perchance to Dream” from season one touched on this concept, but here it’s explored head on and in much more depth. The entire episode, and every one in it, may very well be one long dream.


Dennis Weaver is engaging and intense as Adam Grant, a man sentenced to death by electrocution. We watch the verdict being announced. We hear the sentencing. We meet the key players. Grant steadfastly claims that none of what we’re seeing is actually happening; it’s all simply a recurring nightmare he’s having. And if they fry him… well, he’ll wake up, and everyone in his dream will cease to exist. Sounds crazy… but damn, he seems to really believe it. As the time of his execution draws near (midnight, of course), those around him begin to suspect, for various reasons, that he may in fact be right.


So you’ve got that tried and true race-against-the-clock-call-the-governor-before-they-flip-the-switch plot device propelling things. You’ve got fine performances, particularly from Weaver and Harry Townes as the cranky DA (Townes was a pretty regular face on TV in the 50’s and 60’s, particularly on Gunsmoke and The Fugitive). You’ve got a top notch script from Charles Beaumont, plus great camerawork from George T. Clemens (heavy on the tilted angles and shadowy lighting, particularly in the opening and closing courtroom scenes). John Brahm, who directed more TZ episodes than any other director, holds it all together beautifully. There’s nothing wrong here. This is top notch Zone, and it sits comfortably within my top 10 all-time favorites.


CBS revived The Twilight Zone in 1985 with a one-hour, multiple-story format. The series offered mostly new tales, with occasional remakes of classic TZs. “Shadow Play” was one of the episodes remade. As I recall, it doesn’t deviate much from Beaumont’s script, except for some business about Grant having a sister. It’s probably the single best remake, but that’s really not saying much (the other remakes included “Night of the Meek,” “Dead Man’s Shoes,” and “The After Hours,” and none of them are worthwhile). The TZ revival worked best when they ignored the lofty heights of the original and focused on new stuff (“Profile in Silver,” “Nightcrawlers,” and “The Once and Future King” are just a few examples of the new crew getting it right). You know, I should probably spotlight the ‘80s series at some point….

Peter Coyote in the remake. You, sir, are no Dennis Weaver.

Next week, Shelly Berman visits The Twilight Zone. Rod tries to be funny again. It, um… doesn’t quite work out.

TZ Promo: "Long Live Walter Jameson" (3/18/1960)

I’ve been waiting for this day since I first embarked on my five-year Twilight Zone anniversary celebration. Tonight marks the 50th anniversary of my all-time favorite episode, “Long Live Walter Jameson.”

Walter Jameson (Kevin McCarthy) and Samuel Kittridge (Edgar Stehli) are college professors, the best of friends. They're so close, in fact, that Jameson is engaged to marry Kittridge’s daughter Susanna. But as the years have passed, Kittridge has noticed something disturbing: as he himself grows older, his friend never seems to age. One evening during a game of chess, Kittridge corners Jameson on the issue. The truth, at once amazing and devastating, is revealed.

“Long Live Walter Jameson” is essentially a two-character drama (which would translate quite nicely to the stage, come to think of it). The script by Charles Beaumont is flawless, and the performances by McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) and Stehli are top notch, refined and nuanced, utterly believable. In their hands, the fantastic nature of the tale never seems… well, fantastic. Director Tony M. Leder (Children of the Damned) wisely stays out of the way for the most part, allowing the actors to sell the story without much visual flourish, save for the finale, a brilliant technical feat of lighting and makeup (special mention must be made of William Tuttle’s work here; he’d go on do more elaborate work in TZ’s “Eye of the Beholder,” not to mention George Pal's The Time Machine).

The script contains one of my favorite dialogue passages in the entire series, eloquently spoken by Kevin McCarthy as the tragic Walter Jameson:

I was like you, Sam: afraid of death. I thought of all the things that there were to know, and the miserable few years a man had to know them, and it seemed senseless. Every night I dreamed as you dream, of immortality....only if a man lived forever, I thought, would there be any point in living at all...

"Last stop on a long journey, as yet another human being returns to the vast nothingness that is the beginning and into the dust that is always the end."

Several years back, my friend Bill Huelbig met Kevin McCarthy at a convention. He obtained the following for me, which I still display proudly in my office to this day. Thanks Bill!

McCarthy recorded an audio commentary for this episode for the (wonderful) Definitive Edition DVD, in which he states that, aside from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the bulk of his fan mail concerns this episode. He celebrated his 94th (!) birthday last month, and has joked in interviews that he just might be immortal after all. Time will tell....

Next week: Roddy McDowell crash-lands on Mars. He cowers inside his wrecked ship, afraid of who (or what) is awaiting him outside. Are they people? And if they are, are they just like him...?

TZ Promo: “The Hitch-hiker” (1/22/1960)

I discovered old radio shows like Suspense and Inner Sanctum a few years before I discovered The Twilight Zone. I bought a few of them on cassette, and one of them was "The Hitch-hiker," an episode of Suspense from 1942 that starred Orson Welles as a man who, while traveling cross-country by car, is menaced the same ominous man hitch-hiking along the way. The radio script was written by Lucille Fletcher, wife of film and radio composer Bernard Herrmann, who contributed the musical score for the radio production (a nice bit of synergy that would be repeated, in a fashion, 18 years later; more on this below). Fletcher also wrote Suspense's most famous episode, "Sorry, Wrong Number."

Rod Serling's take on "The Hitch-hiker" changes the protagonist from male to female (the beautiful Inger Stevens is marvelous in the role), but otherwise remains very faithful to Fletcher's original tale. Alvin Ganzer's direction is superb (watch for the scene where our heroine almost gets the business end of a moving train), and the cinematography by George T. Clemens is appropriately dark and moody (the final scene is masterfully done).

Perhaps the most interesting component of the episode, however, is the underscore. "The Hitch-hiker" doesn't feature a composer credit; rather, it is "stock-scored" (i.e. scored using assorted cues from the CBS Music Library, often by multiple composers and without any perceptible unifying theme). At some point in time before The Twilight Zone debuted, Bernard Herrmann recorded a number of suites (collections of short cues) designed to be used and re-used in various CBS shows. Much of the music he contributed was actually recycled music he'd written years earlier for various radio shows. And, delightfully (as these things tend to delight people like me), some of his original "Hitch-hiker" radio score appears in the TZ adaptation! This brilliant touch elevates an already-great episode to sheer excellence. Needless to say, it's one of my top ten favorite episodes of all time.

Bernard Herrmann

Herrmann's score (well, five out of nine total cues) was released on the 1983 vinyl LP The Outer Space Suite from Cerberus Records (which is obviously way out of print). Those same five cues were later released on CD in 1999 on the 4-disc Twilight Zone 40^th Anniversary collection (which, as far as I know, is still in print and easily obtained).

Incidentally, Suspense wasn't the only radio program to produce "The Hitch-hiker." It was first done by Campbell Playhouse in 1941, and later in 1946 by Mercury Summer Theater. Orson Welles starred in all three. The Suspense version can be found here.

Who exactly is the hitch-hiker? I won't give it away, but if you see him on the side of the road…. Man, keep on driving. Don't stop.

Next week's episode features a battle of wills between a cranky man in a Las Vegas casino and a most insistent slot machine. Take a gamble on it, won't you?