TZ Promo: "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" (1/10/1963)

Season 4, Episode 2 (#104 overall)

Cayuga Production # 4857

Originally aired January 10, 1963

Yawn.

After last week’s engaging “In His Image,” The Twilight Zone brings us what might have been an intriguing ghost story, but instead emerged as a maritime exercise in seafaring tedium.

“The Thirty-Fathom Grave” concerns a naval destroyer whose sonar picks up a clanging sound thirty fathoms below.  It turns out there’s an American submarine down there, half buried in the sand.  A couple of dives later, it’s determined that the sub is one torpedoed by the Japanese during WWII.  Coincidentally (or not), a crew member on the destroyer was also the sole surviving crew member on that ill-fated sub, and that incessant clanging is driving him six kinds of crazy.

This could’ve been a nice little paranormal excursion of the nautical variety, like season one’s “Judgment Night,” but it’s severely overlong at the show’s new hour length.  It…. just…. drags.  By the time we get to the denouement, when the source of the mysterious undersea clanging is revealed, it’s not enough to justify the hour we've just spent waiting for it.  The episode does achieve quite a bit of production value by shooting on an actual US destroyer, not to mention the impressive miniature work employed for the exterior submarine scenes (the close-ups were shot in an actual underwater tank; equally impressive).  And the core story is actually a pretty good ghost tale, but Serling’s supersized script kills it before it ever gets out of the dock.  As presented, “The Thirty-Fathom Grave” is dead in the water. 

A-ha! In his wonderfully detailed The Twilight Zone: Opening the Door to a Television Classic, author Martin Grams reveals that Serling originally wrote “The Thirty-Fathom Grave” as a half-hour script, then expanded it to suit the show’s new format.  Well shit, this could’ve been a pretty great episode after all.  Kinda makes me want to create a “lost” 25-minute version.  I do have the necessary software at my disposal.  I’m just sayin’.

Happily, the cast is pretty decent.  Character actor Simon Oakland, last seen in season two’s “The Rip Van Winkle Caper,” is his usual gruff-but-compassionate self as Captain Beecham.  He’s probably best remembered as Captain Schrank in 1961’s West Side Story, not to mention 1960’s Psycho.  In fact, it was his role in Psycho that subsequently led to his appearance as the Empyrian, a birdlike alien, on The Outer Limits’ “Second Chance” four years later. Oakland was also a regular on TV’s Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and he died after a long battle with cancer in 1983.

...and speaking of The Outer Limits, diver McClure is played by John Considine, who played the stoic Bertram Cabot from “The Man Who Was Never Born,” one of that series’ finest offerings).

Crewman Bell, the ship’s resident guilt-ridden basket case, is effectively and twitchily played by Mike Kellin, another character actor who appeared in countless TV series throughout the fifties, sixties and seventies.  Coincidentally, Kellin was a real-life Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy during WWII (typecasting, perhaps?).  Like Oakland, he died of cancer in 1983.

We also see Bill Bixby in a minor role as the Officer of the Day.  For me, Bixby will always be Dr. David Banner, the beleaguered Jekyll to Lou Ferrigno’s Hyde on TV’s The Incredible Hulk.  I was a huge fan of the Marvel comic series, and became a devoted fan of the show when it premiered in 1977.  Bixby also starred in the earlier TV series The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and My Favorite Martian.  Bixby sadly died after a long battle with cancer in 1993.

Noticing a trend here?  Is there some kind of curse associated with this episode?  Was everybody exposed to something on that destroyer? On a serious note, it’s sobering to realize just how many Twilight Zone actors and crew members are now gone.  I guess it’s to be expected, since the series is over 50 years old now, but… damn.

“The Thirty-Fathom Grave” is by no means a terrible episode.  It looks great and it’s well acted, but ultimately it can’t overcome the ponderous script and bloated length.  File it under W for “waterlogged” and set sail, Cap’n.

Next week:  A machine that creates a ham sandwich out of thin air?  I’m so there.

*There’s a reason I keep pointing out Outer Limits connections.  ‘Nuff said for now.

TZ Promo: "In His Image" (1/03/1963)

Season 4, Episode 1 (#103 overall)

Cayuga Production # 4851

Originally aired January 3, 1963

The revamped Twilight Zone launched fifty years ago tonight with Charles Beaumont’s “In His Image.” There’s really no way I can discuss the episode without spoiling it, so… fuck it, I won’t even try.  In fact, I’ll get it over with by very quickly encapsulating the proceedings:

Guy murders a woman in a subway in what appears to be a brief psychotic episode. Guy picks up girlfriend and drives to his hometown.  Lots of details about the town don’t jibe with his memory, and he has a couple more violent episodes as he tries to figure out what the hell is happening.  He eventually tracks down a man who appears to be his identical twin, but is actually his maker.  It turns out our troubled hero is a robot, one with an unfixable flaw that causes him to periodically go crazy.  Creator and creation clash in an epic battle, from which only one of them will emerge.

See, I didn't spoil everything after all (I guess I could just mentioned that Beaumont’s teleplay was based on his own short story “The Man Who Made Himself,” which is a spoiler in itself).

George Grizzard shines as both Alan Talbot (the creation) and Walter Ryder, Jr. (the creator).  The two are completely different personalities (Alan is humored and gregarious, while Walter is bitter and withdrawn), and Grizzard expertly inhabits both.  Hands down, this is one of my favorite performances in the series' five-year run.  Season two’s “Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room” featured a similar two-sides-of-the-same-coin performance by Joe Mantell, but his excellent work was hampered by less-than-optimal rear projection.  Here, things are technically perfect. If there are split-screen seams, I sure as hell can't see them (not even under Blu-ray’s high-resolution microscope).

Grizzard appeared in many television series throughout the fifties and sixties, and was an accomplished theater performer (he won a Tony in 1996 for his work in the revival of A Delicate Balance (shown at left).  Genre fans may have spotted him on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, on which he appeared three times. More recently, he had a recurring role on TV's Law and Order, and his last appearance on film was in Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers in 2006, shortly before he passed away in 2007).

Alan's girlfriend Jessica is played by the lovely Gail Kobe.  TZ babe alert!  *sigh*  We caught a brief glimpse of her in season one’s “A World of Difference,” and we’ll see her again in season five’s “The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross.”  She’s equally delicious in two of The Outer Limits’ sillier endeavors (“Specimen: Unknown” and “Keeper of the Purple Twilight;” the latter has to be seen to be believed). 

At least The Outer Limits was kind enough to get her all wet for us.

Katherine Squire, last seen in season three’s “One More Pallbearer,” appears for a brief but memorable role as the crazy Christian lady who badgers Alan in the subway, and good God is she repellent.  This is "witnessing" at its most coarse and obnoxious; thankfully, Alan dispatches her by tossing her in front of an oncoming train.  Sometimes murderous rages can be productive after all.

The onset of Alan’s violent fits are conveyed to us via a cacophony of blips, bloops and buzzes (standard sci-fi gizmos-gone-crazy sound effects; apparently inaudible to others), along with a bright light that comes over his face (apparently invisible to others; it’s reminiscent of the “death light” depicted in season one’s “The Purple Testament”).  It’s all effective enough but, frankly, Grizzard’s tortured reactions would have sufficed, and kept things a bit more subtle.

When Alan arrives at Walter's residence for what will become an epic showdown, we're treated to a nice atmospheric shot of Walter sneaking up behind him in the shadows.  If this shot looks vaguely familiar, it may be because we've already seen Grizzard perform a very similar arrival in season one's "The Chaser."

I'm sure this wasn't done intentionally, but it's a marvelous piece of visual continuity regardless (one that Arlen Schumer apparently missed in his amazing Visions from The Twilight Zone coffee table book, in which he draws several visual parallels between images from various episodes. By the way, every true TZ fan needs to own this book. It's about twenty years out of print, but can easily be tracked down on Amazon or eBay).

When viewed as a whole, The Twilight Zone is positively bristling with compelling and iconic images; here we get one of my personal favorites. Upon receiving a forearm injury right before the midway act break, Alan slowly peels the skin back to reveal the first concrete hint about the mystery of his identity.

  Boom!  You’re a robot, dude.

The idea of a simulacrum carrying on in ignorance of its own artifice was almost certainly a sci-fi cliché by the time The Twilight Zone tackled it (in season one’s “The After-Hours” and season two’s “The Lateness of the Hour”), but in the capable hands of writer Charles Beaumont, the concept never feels unoriginal or stale (Beaumont also wrote another surprise-it’s-a-robot story called “Last Rites” in 1955, an equally fine yarn that would've made a great TZ episode).  Harlan Ellison would employ this device in his 1965 Outer Limits teleplay “Demon with a Glass Hand” (which happens to be my all-time favorite TOL episode; maybe I’m a much bigger fan of surprise-robot stories than I realized).

Walter Ryder Jr.’s basement lab is a pretty impressive set, complete with the usual wall-sized computer terminals and assorted gadgetry.  Particularly effective is what appears to be a brick-lined incinerator unit in the wall, but is more likely some sort of finishing/activation chamber for Ryder Jr.’s mechanical offspring (speaking of which, check out those failed proto-Alans lying dormant on a double-wide gurney).

And hey, Forbidden Planet alert!  The notorious bank of Pac-Man lights, originally a piece of equipment in that film’s C-57D Space Cruiser, makes yet another appearance on the series. This prop was used previously in “People Are Alike All Over,” “Elegy" and “Third From the Sun." I'm betting we'll see it again before the series ends...

As the first double-length TZ episode aired, “In His Image” never feels overlong or bloated (an attribute which next week’s episode will sadly not share).  It’s an absolute winner, one of my top 20 favorites of all time.

Next week:  There’s something scary inside that wrecked submarine, so whatever you do, don’t go down there!  No?  Okay, whatever you do, don’t go down there twice!  Still no?  Okay, can we at least agree that you won’t go down there a third time?  Oh come on, seriously??!

Introduction to Season 4

When The Twilight Zone wrapped up its third season in the spring of 1962, it found itself without a sponsor (maybe the existing sponsors weren't exactly thrilled with the show’s mediocre ratings and jumped ship); consequently, CBS didn't include the show in its fall 1962 schedule.  Things would eventually get resolved over the next several months, but the delay meant that the show wouldn't return to the air until mid-season,  allowing for only half the usual number of episodes.  But the reduced quantity was a minor concern when weighed against the massive changes wrought upon the show before its return. 

The most obvious difference, aside from the new opening title sequence (detailed yesterday, here), is the somewhat jarring switch to an hour-long format.  Serling had originally conceived The Twilight Zone as an hour show but bowed to CBS’s original wishes; this late change indicates that the network must have changed its mind (probably hoping a bigger show would equate to bigger ratings).  Another notable change is the loss of producer Buck Houghton, who had moved onto other pursuits during the show’s six-month limbo. Houghton’s initial replacement was Herbert Hirschman who, according to a 8/20/1962 letter to Serling, may have been responsible for changing the name of the series to, simply, Twilight Zone (minus the word The; thanks to Martin Grams’ exhaustively-researched The Twilight Zone: Opening the Door to a Television Classic for this interesting tidbit). The show would ultimately go through three different producers during its final two years on the air, a sure sign that the series was no longer the well-oiled machine it had been for its first three years.

Rod Serling was still around, but he was much less involved on the production end, as he had taken a teaching job at Antioch College when the show’s future had suddenly become clouded with uncertainty.  Serling retained his title as executive producer and continued hosting and narrating, but it’s worth noting that he only wrote seven of season four’s eighteen episodes (one of which was an adaptation of an existing short story by somebody else).  Since his writing had slipped so dramatically in terms of both quality and originality during season three, this was actually a blessing.  I hate saying that, but goddamn it, it’s true: Serling’s scripts were, for the most part, the weakest of the fourth season.  Meanwhile, Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson really shined during season four, each contributing episodes that sit comfortably among my top 20 favorites.

There are a few cosmetic changes to note.  First and foremost, Serling’s on-camera appearances were no longer shot in tandem with each episode’s production (seasons two and three often found him on set, sharing the same scenery as the actors, sometimes in quite clever ways); rather, his season four narrations were shot in front of a plain gray background.  Further, his “next week” previews would now be augmented with episode clips.

For its first three seasons, each episode would begin with the opening title sequence, then pan down from a starry sky to the opening scene.  Now, the transition would be handled with a simple dissolve.  This extended to the end of the episode: instead of a return to the starry sky via an upward pan, a simple fade to black was employed. Finally, each episode’s end credits would no longer feature a unique still to distinguish it; rather, a simple starry sky was used behind the text.

Considering all the changes, season four ultimately feels like a different show.  However, I must note that, in my oh-so-humble opinion, season four is by and large decent.  There are a few mediocre entries, but nothing approaching past atrocities like “Mr. Bevis,” “Mr. Dingle, the Strong,” and “Four O’clock” (season five will have its share of horrific misfires too, but we’ll get to those in due time).  All told, season four is an odd experiment that didn't exactly succeed, but almost certainly didn't fail.

Season 4 Opening Sequence (1963)

A new season of The Twilight Zone usually means, among other things, a new opening sequence.  It was decided to contextualize the elements in Rod Serling's revised opening narration with actual objects (in order: door, window, eyeball, Einstein's Theory of Relativity, mannequin, clock).  The whole thing would crescendo with the appearance of the series name, which had inexplicably become, simply, Twilight Zone (dropping the word The).  Compared with the relative austerity of season 3's singular, spinning spiral, the new opening is positively bursting with diverse imagery.

This new opening sequence ran roughly five seconds longer than those of seasons two and three, so the existing theme music (Two library cues by Marius Constant, "Etrange No. 3" and "Milieu No. 1," spliced together) was now too short.  The existing end theme ("Etrange No. 3" and "Milieu No. 2" spliced together) was re-edited to create the new opening theme; unfortunately, the result lacks the frenetic urgency of its predecessor.

Let's break it down, shall we?

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. 

Beyond it is another dimension.

A dimension of sound.

A dimension of sight.

A dimension of mind.

You've moving through a land of both shadow and substance...

...of things and ideas.

You've just crossed over into...

...The Twilight Zone.

(dissolve to opening scene)

Here it is in full motion:

This opening sequence would carry forward into season 5, making it the most used --- and probably most recognizable --- of them all.  It's my least favorite, truth be told... probably because I've seen it so many times.

The new opening sequence is only one of several major changes --- cosmetic and otherwise --- that season 4 will bring.  Stay tuned.