The Big Whatsit

Recently, I have been catching up with old episodes of The Twilight Zone. Fascinated and occasionally rapt, exactly as I was when I first saw the show many moons ago (and stunned at the sight of Lord Rodney of Serling introducing episodes with - gasp! - a lit cigarette in his hand, the sort of thing you just don’t see these days), my viewing has naturally led to a rented copy of 1983’s Twilight Zone: The Movie. It’s a film I haven’t watched in some years, and now - as then - it remains an uneven experience. Some segments in this portmanteau piece are better than others, and oddly enough it’s the lesser known directors who pull out the gems.

Even though Burgess Meredith replaces Serling (who died of a heart attack in 1975) on narration duties the movie is undeniably Zonesque in tone. There are several reasons for this, the first being that three of the four segments are adapted from original series episodes. They might not tell exactly the same story, but the spirit of the source is definitely present. Second, the movie is produced by Steven Spielberg, and isn’t it easy to imagine the legendary film maker as an adolescent, perched before the television and sucked in hopelessly by Serling’s yarns? Some real love has gone into the project, evidenced by the proliferation of inside references, cameos from cast members and other bits of trivia littered throughout the action. For instance, Bill Mumy, one of the actors from the series, shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it guest appearance within the segment that draws on an episode he starred in years before. Meredith’s turn as the substitute Serling is wholly appropriate, given he was in some of the series’ most famous stories and is closely associated with it.

Though The Twilight Zone holds a great deal of cult value in Britain, it obviously means a lot more to Americans, who continually try to revive it. The concept’s revered status meant that despite the movie’s mixed success, its formula was strong enough to inspire a new series in 1985 and a further run in 2002. Rumours of yet another stab at the Zone are making the rounds, with Leonardo Di Caprio cited as a major influence in the mooted production of a new, big budget movie adaptation. In the meantime, you can catch radio episodes on the web, with Stacy Keach narrating and a well known cast taking part.

It’s easy to suggest they don’t know when to let go, but there’s actually a simple reason why it’s the original series that sticks in the mind. It isn’t the regular appearance of Serling, who looked - and apparently was - nervous at facing the camera, but rather the attitude of the audiences who watched those classic shows from 1959 to 1964. If one mood prevails throughout the run, it’s paranoia, a feeling that was rife in a contemporary USA that was experiencing the Cold War at its height. Just as an Iron Curtain had descended over Eastern Europe, thus cutting the west off from having any real knowledge of what was happening on the other side, so the Zone reflects that fear of the unknown, what it represents and what it might do. Serling tapped into that chilling mood superbly, with iconic movies of the period such as 1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers paving the way.

In spite of President Reagan’s best efforts to reignite that feeling, the Cold War didn’t have the same grip in the post-Vietnam 1980s, and as such the movie version of the Zone loses much of its power. We enjoy its tall tales, but we see that’s all they are, flights of fantasy that might have some morality to them but essentially work as a slice of nostalgia. Older viewers might enjoy the simple-minded yearning for youth that lies at the heart of the second segment. The fourth, which was one of the very best episodes from the original series and a pure durge of adrenalin, still works as a taut, knife-edge thriller, but the third has changed completely, now introducing a more human element to a story that was originally about people being scared by something they couldn’t stop.

None of it is dreadful, but the film’s four distinct tales have no connection and can be viewed distinctly. Starting with the loosely linking prologue, here’s a glance at each, accessed as you may well suppose with the key of imagination. Beyond is another dimension…

Prologue (directed by John Landis)

Dan Ackroyd has hitched a lift with Albert Brooks, and they’re driving along a deserted road late at night. The casette player has chewed up Brooks’s tape, and they resort to talking, settling on the subject of guessing each other’s TV theme tunes. Ultimately, they get on to The Twilight Zone, discussing their favourite episodes, before Ackroyd asks Brooks if he wants to see something really scary.

As a five-minute introduction, it’s fine, though how ‘Zone’ it is remains a different subject entirely. Rather, the sequence plays more like a scene from Creepshow, a random slice of jump cut horror that sits at odds with much of the following material. Ackroyd and Brooks are never less than watchable, but mercifully they  don’t outlive their welcome, well one of them doesn’t at any rate.

Segment One (dir. John Landis)

Bill Connor (Vic Morrow) is angry. He’s lost his chance of promotion to a colleague who happens to be Jewish, and over a few drinks with his buddies he lays into Semites, black people and the Vietnamese. The Zone isn’t going to like that, and Bill gets to experience exactly what it’s like to be amongst the minorities he has just abused. After a chase through the streets of Nazi-occupied Poland, he winds up being lynched by the Ku Klux Clan and is then pursued by American GIs in North Vietnam. Clearly, as Bill learns you don’t want to be a bigot whilst crossing over into the Twilight Zone.

As you might expect with Landis at the helm, the segment looks great. Particularly during the scenes where the Auschwitz-destined train collides with 1980s America, the cinematography is excellent. Where it falls down is in its lack of moral centre. Bill is so odious that without ever wishing his fate on anyone, you’re left thinking he may just deserve it. Then again, there’s no chance of redemption. Once Bill enters the Zone, he’s on a roller-coaster nightmare before his extremely bleak end, which amounts to torture. It’s hopeless, grim and then it just sort of finishes without any glimmer of hope.

This segment lent a degree of notoriety that palled over the entire project. Morrow and two young extras were killed during a tragic accident that took place whilst shooting a scene. Though the star of the piece initially attracted the headlines, attention soon turned to the children, who it emerged had been paid in cash for their services due to the fact that it was illegal for them to be working at the time of the filming (2.30 am). It took five years for Landis and the crew involved to be cleared of charges of involuntary manslaughter, but the damage to the movie’s reputation never really went away.

Segment Two (dir. Steven Spielberg)

In the original Zone episode, ‘Kick the Can,’ the ageing resident of an old peoples’ home finds a link to his youth in the shape of an old tin can that has been booted around by some kids. Clearly, it was felt that the 1980s alternatives wouldn’t be able to work this out for themselves, so Scatman Crowthers was introduced as a kind of saintly savant who explains the magic to the coffin dodgers. Crowthers is always good value, but the story transforms him into a wise sage, gently linking the residents’ memories to their childhood and ultimately reacquanting them with it.

This is Spielberg at his most syrupy. The centre of the story sounds a little too close to Peter Pan for comfort, and it’s worth bearing in mind that the auteur always wanted to make something along these lines (until he actually did, with Hook, only to find it wasn’t very good and he needed to up his game). Cue inevitable scenes with cute kids wearing old peoples’ outsized clothes and saying big words in munchkin voices. It’s all a bit shit, bathed in soft focus and pastel and with its heart ever close to breaking. The ‘Take me with you’ speech is retained, however, and achieves some emotional resonance.

Segment Three (dir. Joe Dante)

Gremlins director Joe Dante was relatively new on the scene at this stage, and it’s perhaps for this reason that he pulls out a strong, energetic episode that’s full of menace. Helen Foley (Kathleen Quinlan) is a teacher who comes across a small boy called Anthony (Jeremy Licht) in a diner. She drives him home after accidentally knocking him down, but soon learns that his home life isn’t quite as easy going and jocular as it appears. Anthony’s family seem a little too eager to please his every whim, to watch endless cartoons, to treat every incident with a strained smile. The reason is that Anthony can make anything happen just by thinking about it. He can rob people of their mouths, inject them into nightmarish cartoons and even make them disappear entirely. Everyone is terrified of him, everyone that is apart from Helen…

The segment is based on a celebrated episode called ‘It’s a Good Life,’ in which Bill Mumy played the six-year old monster as a scary-eyed kid who sent anyone with unhappy thoughts to the ‘cornfield’*. There’s nothing quite so abstract in the update. Clearly, the writers approached the material from a child’s perspective - what inspires kids? The answer is cartoons. As a consequence, that’s all his family get to watch on TV, and even his house is built according to animated specifications, all weird angles and exaggerated arches. Dante realises that whilst cartoons can be cute and funny, they can also be terrifying, as one of the characters learns when she is summarily dumped into a show that quickly turns horrific. Also worthy of note is the magic trick performed by Uncle Walt (Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ Kevin McCarthy, a marvellous piece of casting), made all the more horrible because the thing that comes out of the hat is something that has obviously emerged on previous occasions, scaring the audience again and again and again.

Unlike the original story, which didn’t bother to do much more than offer us a glimpse into Anthony’s weird life, here the tale ends on a note of hope. we don’t know if things really will turn out all right for Helen and her new charge, but the optimisic climax suggests that even the worst children aren’t beyond all reach.

* In the 2002 series of The Twilight Zone, Bill Mumy returns as Anthony, showing us his adult life in ‘It’s Still a Good Life.’ Needless to say, none of it ends well. Anthony is as terrible as ever, even with the measuring influence of his daughter.

Segment Four (dir. George Miller)

The Twilight Zone saves the best until last, and this reworking of the famous ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’ retains all the power of its source material. Indeed, apart from the omission of a wife for the beleagured hero, the remake is extremely similar to the original episode and at times virtually identical. William Shatner did a very good job of playing the disturbed air passenger in the 1963 version, recovering from a breakdown and convinced that a monster is on the wing of his plane whilst in flight. In the update, an inspired instance of casting has John Lithgow in the role. Adept as the sweaty, saucer-eyed nervous wreck who hates flying and is forced to see a gremlin that no one else notices, Lithgow is simply superb. He wreaks every last drop of tension from his character, and from the agonising situation he is placed in.

When we first meet him, Lithgow is locked in the plane’s restroom, already mentally in pieces at being in flight. He’s guided back to his seat by the stewardess, but then a glance out of the window reveals an impossibility - someone, or something, is on the wing, and it’s ripping out the wires from one of the engines. But nobody else can see it. Whenever he tries to get someone to take a look, nothing is there, which entertains a neat possibility - maybe nothing is there. What’s more likely? That a monster is really taking chunks out of the plane, or that a disturbed passenger with an evident fear of flying is filling in the blanks with his imagination, personifying his fears in the shape of a malevolent, fantastical creature?

Until the close of the episode, this isn’t made at all clear. What we get are moments of mounting horror for Lithgow, his eyes literally popping from their sockets in one delicious scene where he opens his blind to see if the monster is still outside, only to find it pressed against the window and staring right back at him. The segment is helped along by a rather convincing creature. Though the suspense of the original episode holds even when it’s viewed today, its gremlin has dated horribly and now looks just like a bloke in a bear suit, perhaps the irate cousin of Bungle from Rainbow. The movie never makes the mistake of revealing its creature fully, giving us glimpses of a stick-limbed figure with bug eyes that flits far too lightly through the high altitude storm.

As an exercise in pure terror, the final segment is terrific. It very nearly makes the lacklustre first half of the movie worthwhile, and proves that The Twilight Zone, just like any other classic series, had its good and bad weeks. I’m sure we all have our favourite episodes, those we might like to have seen remade for the movie. I hold a great deal of affection for ‘Will the real Martian please stand up?’, about a group of diners who come to realise an alien is amongst them. Another favourite is ‘The Eye of the Beholder,’ with its marvellous twist in a tale of vanity and wanting to belong. And there are many others, as I’m sure there are for you, as witnessed on each occasion when you find yourself travelling through another dimension… a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind… a journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Zone…