Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone – Season One (1959 – 1960/Image Entertainment Blu-ray)
Picture:
B+ Sound: B- Extras: A Episodes: A
Like
radio drama and feature films before it, television embraced the anthology
format early on. This is a series that
features a different self-contained story each week with the focus on a genre
and even clever concept. Radio hits like
Suspense, Inner Sanctum and Escape
are prime examples of these shows. TV
took over and did their share of early anthology shows, including the
underrated One Step Beyond, which
wanted to be more than just a thriller series, but it left itself open for
improvement and a young writer named Rod Serling filled that gap. The result was The Twilight Zone, one of television’s all-time classics and the
greatest anthology TV series of all time.
It is therefore no surprise that Season
One (1959 – 1960) is one of the first classic TV series to be released on
Blu-ray and the first complete season of any black and white series to make it
to the high definition format anywhere.
Still
delivering an impact today and casting a long shadow over all the anthology
series like it that followed (including many failed imitators and a few
revivals using the same name that did not work out), these first 36 half-hours
were so shocking and powerful that many are all-time classics in all of the
television medium, were so effective that it is one of the reasons TV became a
competitor to motion pictures and killed network radio, is so smart and
enduring that it is still considered one of the all-time supreme achievements
the television medium will ever produce.
And that
may be understating the situation.
Serling would write many of the episodes, oversee the series and narrate
all of them, eventually appearing on camera as host. He was a true genius, already a big success
as a writer on many anthology shows, especially making an impact with his
critically acclaimed works Patterns
and Requiem For A Heavyweight. He was more than just a great storyteller, he
was a writer with something to say about the human condition and though this
series, he picked up where the Film Noir era left off (the show began the year
after Orson Welles’ Touch Of Evil
ended it all) and delivered a show up to the greatest expectations his fans and
critics expected he could deliver.
The
following list of those 36 shows includes the writer and director listed, plus
all include audio commentary tracks and (usually) isolated music tracks in
every case:
1) Where
Is Everybody? (Rod Serling/Robert Stevens) – Earl Holliman plays a man
who finds himself in a strange, isolate town.
It looks like it is lived in, but the more he looks, the more he
realizes its population has disappeared.
He also has amnesia and must figure out what is ahead before something
happens to him. James Gregory also stars
in this great opening show that is brilliant in giving the audience totally
what they should be expecting from this show going onward.
2) One
For The Angels (Rod Serling/Robert Parrish) – In another brilliant,
classic episode of the show, comic legend Ed Wynn plays a sidewalk salesman
named Lew who is visited by Mr. Death (a great performance by Murray Hamilton
of Jaws fame) that he must die at
midnight, but Lew does not want to go, so Death has a little girl hit by a car
instead. She now has a date to go for
good, unless Lew can make a sales pitch to Death that prevents him from making
his fatal appointment.
3) Mr.
Denton On Doomsday (Rod Serling/Allen Reisner) – Dan Duryea (The 4 Just Men) plays the title
character, a drunken cowboy in the Old West with no future until a mysterious
figure gives him a potion that turns around his fortunes and makes him the
quickest gun in the west, but it also makes everyone who can get there want to
have a gun match with him. And then
there is another deadly catch… Martin
Landau, Jeanne Cooper and Ken Lynch also star.
4) The
Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine (Rod Serling/Mitch Leisen) – Ida Lupino plays
Barbara Jean Trenton, a once-great big screen Hollywood movie star who lives in
the past watching her films all the time at home in the big mansion her fortune
has bought her, but the people around her start to worry about her health and
future. However, she cannot let the
past, her youth or happiness go and she may just have one final performance in
her to give her what she really wants.
Martin Balsam co-stars in this ingenious episode that remains one of the
series’ great achievements.
5) Walking
Distance (Rod Serling/Robert Stevens) – Yet another masterpiece of the
series has the great Gig Young as tired business executive Martin Stone taking
car ride back to where he grew up, then strolls through his old
neighborhood. When things turn out to be
more unchanged than he expected, he realizes he is three decades back when he
grew up there. Can he get back? Will he want to leave? J. Pat O’Malley and a young Ron Howard also
star and an alternate audio mix is included.
6) Escape
Clause (Rod Serling/Mitch Leisen) – A hypochondriac (the always great
David Wayne) is so afraid of sickness and death, he finds a way to make a deal
with Satan so nothing like that can happen to him. Unfortunately, this deal with the Devil makes
his life dull as… well, you can guess, so he has to get out of it, but will it
cost him his soul?
7) The
Lonely (Rod Serling/Jack Smight) – In yet another great episode,
criminals are sent to prison, but on isolated asteroids that support life. One of them (Jack Warden) gets a special
delivery one day of a woman named Alicia (Jean Marsh) so he can handle the
isolation, but she turns out to be an android and the ramifications are quiet
unexpected. John Dehner and Ted Knight
also star.
8) Time
Enough At Last (Rod Serling/John Brahm) – Burgess Meredith is brilliant
as bank teller Henry Bemis, a bookworm who would rather read books all the time
than have to ever deal with a human being again. He gets his wish when a nuclear war breaks
out and he is the only survivor, but it is not the radiation that will get in
his way first.
9) Perchant
To Dream (Charles Beaumont/Robert Florey) – Richard Conte plays a man
whose psychiatrist tells him that a woman he keeps seeing in nightmares will
kill him should he fall asleep. Beaumont’s first
show fit into the series perfectly and he would become one of its most important
writers. Suzanne Lloyd also stars.
10) Judgment
Night (Rod Serling/John Brahm) – A German man (Nehemiah Persoff) is on
a ship circa 1942 and does not know how or why he is there, just that the ship
is going to be sunk at 1:15 A.M. by a U-Boat.
Will anybody believe him and can he stop the disaster from
happening? Please note that this is
often confused with the One Step Beyond
episode Night Of April 14th which
also co-starred Patrick Macnee of The
Avengers, but that show was about the sinking of The Titanic. Both debuted on CBS in 1959. James Franciscus also stars.
11) And When The Sky Was Opened (Rod Serling/Douglas Heyes) –
Three astronauts return from an experimental space flight, but things become
odd when one of them disappears and no one remembers they even exist. And then there were two… Rod Taylor, Jim Hutton, Charles Aidman,
Maxine Cooper and Sue Randall star.
12) What
You Need (Rod Serling/Al Ganzer) – Another classic of the series has
Ernest Truex in an unforgettable performance as a street salesman who has an
amazing knack to know how the simplest items might be a big help to others, but
when a greedy man wants to exploit him for profit, it turns into a moral
showdown with dire consequences.
13) The
Four Of Us Are Dying (Rod Serling/John Brahm) – Arch Hammer (Harry
Townes) can change his face to look like anyone he wants to and intends to use
this to become rich, but his plan backfires when his reckless identity theft
backfires. Ross Martin, Don Gordon and
Beverly Garland also star.
14) Third
From The Sun (Richard Matheson/Richard Bare) – A scientist (Fritz
Weaver) strongly believes the world will blow itself up with nuclear armaments
and intends to use an experimental spacecraft to avoid it, but his evil boss
stands in his way. Matheson (I Am Legend, The Night Stalker) wrote this first of many for the show, including
some of its best episodes and also helped to make it a classic.
15) I
Shot An Arrow Into The Air (Rod Serling/Stuart Rosenberg) – The
spaceship Arrow One crash lands with five survivors and limited water, so the
survivors work together, until one of them becomes murderous. Well directed by Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke), it is one of the few
shows that has not dated as well, but is very much worth watching.
16) The
Hitchhiker (Rod Serling/Alvin Ganzer) – Nan Adams (Inger Stevens) has a
tire go flat on her way to California and starts to notice a strange man
(Leonard Strong) seems to be following her.
However, he seems to be able to move faster than her car! Another classic (not to be confused with the
horror films of the same name) put this show on the map. Mitzi McCall also stars.
17) The
Fever (Rod Serling/Alvin Ganzer) – This all-time classic episode has a
couple going to Las Vegas
for a trip they’ll never forget. Flora
Gibbs (Vivi Janiss) has won a “fabulous trip” to the adult playground of the
world, but her husband Franklin (Everett Sloane in another great performance)
does not want to go and hates gambling.
But when a drunk (Art Lewis) forces a silver dollar into his hand and
both into the slot of a slot machine, a big payoff changes Franklin’s mind… and
life!
18) The
Last Flight (Richard Matheson/William Claxton) – A British Royal pilot
(Alexander Scourby) flies into a strange cloudy in 1917 and comes out of it in
1960, only to discover he needs to get back quickly or his fellow pilots will
be lost forever.
19) The
Purple Testament (Rod Serling/Richard Bare) – William Reynolds plays a
Lieutenant who finds out he can predict who will lice and die in WWII battles in
the Philippines, but his secret gets out and causes chaos, which becomes grim
when he believes he will be next. This
interesting installment also stars Dick York, Barney Phillips, Warren Oates and
Paul Mazursky.
20) Elegy
(Charles Beaumont/Douglas Heyes) – Space travelers from earth find an asteroid
very much like earth, except that all the living creatures (man and animal) are
frozen in place. Is something more
sinister going on? Cecil Kellaway and
Jeff Morrow star.
21) Mirror
Image (Rod Serling/John Brahm) – Vera Miles (Psycho) is Millicent Barnes, stuck at a bus terminal on a rainy
November evening when total strangers start to claim they just saw and talked
to her variously despite the fact that she has never seen them and has zero
recollection of them. Martin Millner and
Naomi Stevens also star.
22) The
Monsters Are Due On Maple Street (Rod Serling/Ron Winston) – Another
masterpiece of the series think an alien ship has arrived when they see an
Asteroid or something flying through the sky, overreacting to ay the
least. This includes wondering if the
aliens can look like people, replace them and find ways to take over their
neighborhood. Soon, they are waiting for
an attack, even when attacking each other.
Have aliens really arrived?
Claude Akins, Jack Weston, Barry Atwater and Mary Gregory head the cast.
23) A
World Of Difference (Richard Matheson/Ted Post) – Howard Duff plays a
man who is living the life of Arthur Curtis when the room he is in turns out to
be a sound stage, yet he is sure he is real and a real life person, not a
fictitious character. Instead, he is
treated as an actor with the same name playing someone else in a movie. Eileen Ryan also stars in this decent entry.
24) Long
Live Walter Jameson (Charles Beaumont/Tony Leader) – Kevin McCarthy is
the title character, a man who knows history so well, it is as if he actually
lived it. When someone near him suspects
something is wrong about him being so right, he is in for the shock of his
life.
25) People
Are Alike All Over (Rod Serling/Mitchell Leisen) – Roddy McDowall is
one of two surviving astronauts who crash lands on another planet having a
great fear of meeting Martians and expects them to be horrible. Now alone, he meets the people of the planet
and something more twisted than he could ever suspect is waiting for him.
26) Execution
(Rod Serling/David Orrick McDearmon) – A man being hanged in 1880 (Albert
Salmi) suddenly disappears and lands up in 1960, thanks to the experiment of a
scientist (Russell Johnson of Gilligan’s
Island) and needs to send him back, but that will be much tougher.
27) The
Big Tall Wish (Rod Serling/Ron Winston) – An aging African American
boxer (Ivan Dixon) wins a fight he should not be able to thanks to the wish of
a young African American child, but the boxer is not convinced and cannot shake
his doubt, so back in the ring he goes for better or worse.
28) A
Nice Place To Visit (Charles Beaumont/John Brahm) – A petty crook
(Larry Blyden) is shot and killed, but a kind man who calls himself Mr. Pip
(Sebastian Cabot) shows up and convinces him that he can grant him his every
wish. However, it is not the comfortable
set-up it seems and the strings attached may be more of a living nightmare than
a dream come true.
29) Nightmare
As A Child (Rod Serling/Alvin Garner) – Janice Rule is a woman who
finds a little girl at home on her steps who is there to make the older woman
remember a brutal murder, that of her mother.
At the same time, the killer is alive and wants her to forget!
30) A
Stop At Willoughby (Rod Serling/Robert Parrish) – A worn-out executive
(James Daly) falls asleep on a train and finds himself going to a town that
seems to good to be true, but something is not normal about this route and he
needs to figure it all out quickly before it is too late.
31) The
Chaser (Robert Presnell, Jr./Douglas Heyes) – Roger (George Grizzard)
is in love with a woman (Patricia Barry) who is not interested, but a doctor
(John McIntire) has a love potion that is supposed to change things and it
does, but not the way Roger had hoped.
J. Pat O’Malley also stars.
32) A
Passage For Trumpet (Rod Serling/Don Medford) – Jack Klugman is a
musician who is at the end of his rope and tries to kill himself, but he
awakens, yet no one can see or hear him until another trumpeter named Gabriel
(John Anderson) shows up. A fan
favorite, Ned Glass (Charade) also
stars.
33) Mr.
Bevis (Rod Serling/Robert Parrish) – Orson Bean is the title character,
whose life is a wreck until a guardian angel (Henry Jones) shows up to help him,
but the help does not improve matters as expected. William Schallert and Vito Scotti also star.
34) The
After Hours (Rod Serling/Douglas Heyes) – Anne Francis stars in this
masterpiece episode about a department store customer who cannot find the item
she was looking for, a gold thimble on the 9th floor of the
building, then is told there is no 9th floor! Then the thimble turns out to be defective
and she thinks she sees the saleslady, but is shocked when… This is one that never fails to work, no matter
how many times you watch it.
35) The
Mighty Casey (Rod Serling/Douglas Heyes) – A doctor (Abraham Soafer)
bring a new player named Casey (Robert Sorrells) to help the worst baseball
team around which makes Mouth McGarry (Jack Warden) happy, but things turn out
to be problematic when the new player is a robot!
36) A
World Of His Own (Richard Matheson/Ralph Nelson) – Keenan Wynn is
Gregory West, a man who may be having an affair with another woman, or two, or
three and his wife (Phyllis Kirk) is not happy, but Gregory has a much dirtier
secret and it is one that might make him unstoppable.
A few
episodes have not dated as well as others, but they are in a minority and even
those lesser shows have a new luster and appreciation on Blu-ray in High Definition
here, showing us how important and groundbreaking this show really was. Even older than the Blu-ray sets for the
classic original 1960s versions of Star
Trek (all three separate seasons) and The
Prisoner (complete series), Twilight
Zone proves that great classic television (especially when filmed on 35mm
film) takes on a whole new greatness when you can see it with a high new
quality only previously afforded to feature films. In
this case, it shows how great black and white film can look in High Definition,
especially from underrated TV production.
The 1080p
black and white 1.33 X 1 digital High Definition image is absolutely amazing
throughout on each print of every single episode, thanks in part to CBS storing
and preserving the original film materials properly. The result is a giant leap forward in detail,
gray scale, richness of Video Black, depth (it does try to look like Film Noir)
and overall presentation in prints that have limited grain and are in
exceptional shape. Director of
Photography George T. Clemens, A.S.C., composed these shows for the full frame
and the effectiveness of the narrow-vision approach goes beyond just filling an
old TV screen. Joseph LaShelle, A.S.C.,
shot the first episode, which was filmed at Universal and not MGM like the rest
of the series.
Clemens
and company achieved a new look and feel for this show that no television show
and especially no anthology show ever had before, so distinctive that you can
see immediately the difference between a Twilight
Zone episode and any other black and white series in TV history. The lighting is not simple, offering a
definite sense of darkness, even when there is light; light that is added in
unique ways that are subtle and not often discussed. Serling understood that writing stories that
were otherworldly or of an alternate dimension needed to go beyond the printed
page, so its visual style put it ahead of its forerunners and imitators. This Blu-ray set is amazing in finally
revealing over 50 years later just how smart and complex this
narrative-forwarding approach really is and how it is more effective than ever.
The PCM
2.0 sound comes in original Mono and an “enhanced” version that is essentially
more stereophonic. The playback in both
cases are very good, all coming from the original magnetic sound masters also
preserved and in good shape, but I preferred the “enhanced” versions because
they sound cleaner, clearer and allow the exceptional music scores, Bernard
Herrmann’s brilliant & creepy first theme song for the series, sound
effects and dialogue come through. The
result is as good as any non-multi-channel film production of the 1950s and
will even impress audiophiles.
New extras
debuting on this Blu-ray set include new interviews with actors Dana Dillaway,
Suzanne Lloyd, Beverly Garland and Ron Masak, the Tales of Tomorrow version of the episode "What You Need", a vintage
audio interview with director of photography George T. Clemens (Part One), 1977
syndication promos for "A Stop at Willoughby" and "The After
Hours" which was a highly successful reissue, 18 radio dramas versions of
the show and no less than 34 isolated music scores featuring Bernard Herrmann,
Jerry Goldsmith, Leonard Rosenman, Nathan Scott, Lyn Murray, Lucian Moreweck,
René Gurriguenc, Van Cleave and others who contributed to this debut season, 19
new audio commentaries, featuring The Twilight Zone Companion author
Marc Scott Zicree, author and film historian Gary Gerani (Fantastic Television),
author and music historian Steven C. Smith (A
Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann), music
historians John Morgan and William T. Stromberg, writer/producer David Simkins
(Lois & Clark, Dark Angel), writer Mark Fergus (Children of Men, Iron Man), actor William Reynolds and director Ted Post (Beneath The Planet Of The Apes) and the
extremely rare, never-before-released unofficial Twilight Zone pilot, "The Time Element," written by
Rod Serling and hosted by Desi Arnaz and in High Definition.
Extras
imported from the upgraded DVD set includes a paper foldout inside the Blu-ray
case with technical information and very brief episode guide, audio
commentaries by actors Earl Holliman, Martin Landau, Rod Taylor, Martin Milner,
Kevin McCarthy, and CBS executive William Self, vintage audio recollections
with actors Burgess Meredith and Anne Francis, directors Douglas Heyes and
Richard L. Bare, producer Buck Houghton and writer Richard Matheson, Rod
Serling audio lectures from Sherwood Oaks College, Rod Serling promos for ‘Next
Week's’ Show, Original Unaired Pilot Version of "Where is Everybody?"
with Rod Serling's Network Pitch and footage of the Emmy Award wins for the
series.
Though we
had stories with surprise endings before, Twilight
Zone became known not only for being a show with the best twist endings in
TV history, but they did it so well so often that it distinguished itself from
all other imitators. Not that some did
not do it as well (Roald Dahl’s Tales Of
The Unexpected was a worthy successor) but TZ (as it is also known) did it best first. Twilight
Zone – Season One is amazing on its own and when you consider all the great
talent working just for these first episodes, often doing some of the greatest
work of their careers. Whether you are a
huge fan, someone who likes the show or has never seen it before, this Blu-ray
set is stunning all around and easily one of the most important releases of the
year.
It has
never been a better time to revisit this fantastic other dimension. For more, try the links to the rest of the
series in these later season Blu-ray sets:
Season Two
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10554/Rod+Serling%E2%80%99s+The+Twili
Season Three
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10736/Rod+Serling%E2%80%99s+The+Twili
Season Four
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10930/Rod+Serling%E2%80%99s+The+Twili
Season Five
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11106/Rod+Serling%E2%80%99s+The+Twili
- Nicholas Sheffo
