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Re: Favorite Twilight Zone episodes
Been watching some Twilight Zone episodes lately. One of the greatest shows ever made and certainly decades ahead of its time. Would love to know what you fellow Zone fans consider to be your favorite episodes. There are so many great episodes its a bit difficult to narrow them down to ten.
edit: I'll post summaries from Wiki in case the episode title doesn't ring a bell.
And When The Sky Was Opened
The crew of an experimental spaceship begin disappearing one by one after returning to Earth.
Definitely THE best episode revolving around space travel. The fact the disappearances are never explained makes it even more creepier.
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Twenty Two
A stripper recuperating in the hospital is haunted by nightmares of a nurse leading her to a morgue.
The chick in the morgue who repeats that same line("there's room for one more, honey) used to creep me out as a kid. I have always felt the scenes in the morgue and the airport were in her imagination. Serling gives a clue in his narration that she is in the hospital due to suffering a nervous breakdown.
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Death Ship
After landing on a planet, a spaceship crew finds an identical wrecked ship with their dead doppelgängers onboard.
The best of the hour long episodes(season 4). Its only weakness is its title. A lot of suspense in this episode but the title pretty much gives away the ending. Also Jack Klugman's best Zone episode and he's in several.
It's A Good Life
The residents of a small town must pretend they are happy in order to placate a young boy who has terrifying mental powers.
A haunting episode. Predicts the complete collapse of the family structure where kids decide what to do and the parents go along willingly. Obviously this episode has a supernatural element to it, but that's what it comes down to. Absolutely brilliant. I bet this episode mind fucked people in the early 60s.
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Living Doll
A girl receives a talking doll that attacks her step-father for treating its owner poorly.
One of the few episodes that's basically a horror story. I guarantee Child's Play was influenced by this. Other than the horror element of the talking doll, there's dark undertones of abuse here as you can tell the kid and possibly the wife are abused by this man.
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Miniature
A man who does not fit in falls in love with a doll in a museum display.
Love this one but it drags a bit too long. A total loser who simply cant function in the real world fantasies about this doll and falls in love with her and winds up becoming a doll himself. If any more remakes are in store, this episode should be high on the list.
The Incredible World of Horace Ford
A toy designer nostalgic for his youth returns to the neighborhood he grew up in.
Several episodes use the youth nostalgia angle but this one is superior to the others and takes a more realistic approach. Everyone wishes to go back to the "good old days", but this guy romanticizes his youth so much, gets to go back, then realizes it wasn't as great as he remembered it. Just about anyone can relate to this episode.
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Number 12 Looks Just Like You
In a futuristic society, a young woman resists undergoing a medical procedure that makes people young and immune to disease.
Another episode way ahead of its time. An awkward looking girl does not want to assimilate into society and wishes to hold on to her individuality. Once being pressured into it and succumbing to it, becomes just as shallow as everyone else.
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The New Exhibit
An employee takes the wax figures of five murderers home when the wax museum he works in closes.
Another horror episode. Has some plot holes but still a great episode.
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Person Or Persons Unknown
A man wakes up in bed to find that his life has been erased.
Very creepy episode. Waking up to realize that you no longer exist is frightening.
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Honorable mention:
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
A Civil War civilian about to be executed escapes the hangman's noose, but is unable to shake off the mysterious neck pains as he runs home to his wife.
Technically not a Twilight Zone. It's a foreign film that Serling decided to use as a Twilight Zone episode. The ending really packs a punch.
Re: Favorite Twilight Zone episodes
I've never seen even one episode of The Twilight Zone but I've always wanted to. Just never got around to it.
Jesus Christ Russ. TV would not have evolved in the way it did had The Twilight Zone never existed. You MUST watch this series, whether buying it on DVD or just torrenting. The series is on the torrents. If you want to cherry pick episodes on a torrent, I'll give you a list of about 20 or so episodes to watch.
Nightmare At 20,000 Feet
That almost made my list. Amazing episode and showed Shatner had acting skills even though he got typecast due to Star Trek. Another brilliant episode with Shatner is 'Nick of Time' where him and his wife stop in that small town and get obsessed with that fortune telling machine in that diner.
Re: Favorite Twilight Zone episodes
I really need to go back and re-watch the show. It's been YEARS since I saw it. But as a poor kid with nothing but rabbit ears in the pre-internet days, there were times that old Twilight Zone episodes were the only thing on on late nights.
The show did alot to develop my taste for horror films, and even some of the sister shows that came later on. So many social issues were tackled YEARS before the modern era, all on Twilight Zone. The westerns of TV at the time toyed with certain things to the public, but Twilight Zone just went straight for everyday America, and actually poked the finger at disillusioned American idealism which was really non-existant. The 50's & 60's weren't Happy Days, regardless what the Cunningham's did.
There's alot of stuff today I watch, and will still find myself going "Twilight Zone did it". Even alot of people totally missed that a MASSIVE amount of The Simpsons' popular 'Treehouse of Horror' episodes, borrowed regularly from classic Twilight Zone.
I thought Friday The 13th: The TV Series borrowed alot from The Twilight Zone and was always tipping it's cap to the show.
Re: Favorite Twilight Zone episodes
Rod Serling(and several of his writers) influenced just about everything. To this very day there is yet to be a show to have the impact that TZ had.
Also take into account that Serling was doing this mind blowing shit in the infancy of TV going mainstream. He had the censors up his ass continuously as the stuff was cutting edge and no one knew how to handle it. Scripts would get declined by the censors so he'd rewrite it yet give it the same message but underneath the outer layer.
Serling's death has to be considered one of the most tragic in the history of entertainment. The sky was the limit on his potential. It's unfortunate that he never got the chance to really dive into films. Imagine this guy unleashing his ideas on late 70s horror and that early mid 80s spawn of the summer blockbusters.
Re: Favorite Twilight Zone episodes
I love me some Twilight Zone. Used to watch it growing up with my mom. And every year for the last few years at least they have had a Twilight Zone marathon on New Year's Eve and Day on the ScyFy channel. I lay in bed all hung over and watch endless episodes. It's great.
I think I've seen just about every episode over the years and many mentioned are some of my favorites. Loved both the Shatner episodes.
My all time favorite is "Time Enough At Last" starring Burgess Meredith. - A henpecked book lover finds himself blissfully alone with his books after a nuclear war.
Other favorites
A Stop At Willoughby - Tired of his miserable job and wife, a businessman starts dreaming on the train each night, about an old, idyllic town called Willoughby. Soon he has to know whether the town is real and fancies the thought of seeking refuge there.
The After Hours - A woman is treated badly by some odd salespeople on an otherwise empty department store floor.
Eye of the Beholder - A young woman lying in a hospital bed, her head wrapped in bandages, awaits the outcome of a surgical procedure performed by the State in a last-ditch attempt to make her look "normal".
The Invaders - When a woman investigates a clamor on the roof of her rural house, she discovers a small UFO and little aliens emerging from it. Or so it seems.
Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up - Following a frantic phone call about a crashed spaceship, two policeman try and determine who among the passengers of a bus at a snowed-in roadside diner is from another world.
Nothing In The Dark - An old woman has fought with death a thousand times and has always won. But now she finds herself afraid to let a wounded policeman in her door for fear he is Mr. Death. Is he?
A Kind of Stopwatch - A man is given a stopwatch that halts time.
The Fugitive - Little Jenny wears a brace on her leg. Her best friend, an old man named Old Ben, brightens her life by performing magic -- he can turn into anything he wants. One day, two men show up looking for Old Ben and Jenny asks if they are policemen. Not exactly. Old Ben evades them and confesses to Jenny that he's from another planet. Old Ben is a fugitive, but he is not a criminal.
A Most Unusual Camera - When three dum-dum crooks get ahold of a camera that takes pictures of the future, they set out to make a quick fortune with their new toy.
Little Girl Lost - Awoken in the middle of the night by the cries of his daughter, a father enters the girl's room to find that she has vanished - even though he can still her crying out for help.
The Monsters Are Due On Maple St. - On a peaceful suburban street, strange occurrences and mysterious people stoke the residents' paranoia to a disastrous intensity.
