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John—Wonderful commentary on The Twilight Zone… I was 11 years old when it premiered, and I, too, was utterly captivated and fascinated from the beginning.
Regarding your favorite twelve episodes--- my personal favorite, (not on your list,) was “The Lonely”. Now there was an episode that really spoke to alienation and the need to reach out for human companionship…
Cheers~ Patrick
Mr. Whitehead:
Very well said, sir. My only complaint – and it isn’t really a complaint because favorite episodes are subjective – is that you did not mention “Deaths-Head Revisited,” which was a truly chilling episode, not only because of what happened to Oscar Beregi’s “Captain Lutze” at the end, but because there actually was a Dachau concentration camp.
After the inhabitants, the ghosts, of Dachau, led by Becker (Joseph Schildkraut), stage the trial of Lutze, sentencing him to become insane, which we see happening, Becker tells Lutze, writhing in pain on the ground, that his final judgment will come from God.
As the doctor who later arrived on the scene looks around and asks, “Dachau ... Why do we keep it standing,” we hear one of Serling’s most impassioned closing narrations of the entire series.
"There is, of course, an answer to the doctor’s question. All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes—all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone, but wherever men walk ... God's Earth."
I’d say it’s undoubtedly one of the finest half-hours of television ever produced. Those you cited definitely have merit (I’m quite partial to “The Obsolete Man” and “The Howling Man” myself), but, in my opinion, “Deaths-Head Revisited” is certainly among the best that the series had to offer. Rod Serling’s brother Robert later opined that the beautiful “Walking Distance,” with Gig Young as a harried ad exec who suddenly finds himself back near Homewood, the town he lived in as a child, as among his best work, wonderfully displaying his nostalgia for his hometown of Binghamton.
But, I won’t try to debate any further – in part because there’s still another 142 episodes left! Ha.
Best regards,
Tom
Mr. Whitehead,
WOW! Really enjoyed your Twilight Zone article "Are we at the threshold of the Fifth Dimension?"
For me...the best show growing up, the show was right up there with Warner Brother's cartoons and Alfred Hitchcock when I was a kid; I'm still a kid at heart. Today's generation is missing so much not watching those episodes every week. As a youngster, not knowing what a genius meant, I knew he was one!
I remember some of my friends talking about Rod Serling when he taught at Ithica, brilliant man!
The episode that really hits home for me was "The Bewitchin Pool." When I was in 1st through 5th grade my parents fought all the time; I would be up stairs in my bed trying to sleep with a wicked knot in my stomach praying that they would stop fighting. Boy-O-Boy do I wish I had a swimming pool where I could go and be with Aunt T!
Wonderful article and thank you for the memories...
Best regards,
Jeff
Can John suggest or offer a place to get and relive these episodes. Does John recall the episode of the man that was horribly deformed and hideously ugly, but was offered the chance to go to another planet to escape Earth. He accepts and travels to the new place. As he disembarks a very beautiful, young lithe woman meets him and is about to board his craft to go back to Earth, obviously an exchange. She looks at him and says "You are so beautiful and I am so ugly. Will they accept me on Earth?" He is speechless.
Yep, 45 years ago and I remember that one like yesterday.
Bob
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