Twilight Zone Companion

by Marc Scott Zicree

  Don is very good with action things, startling things, says Buck Houghton. He has a need for explosion of some sort. I was afraid that Deaths-head Revisited was going to get a little talky. There were opportunities for people to appear in a way that would startle you, and there were all sort of confrontations that I thought could profit by a director whose taste was for violent action. And I think he delivered it. I think he did very well in that.

  YOUNG MANS FANCY (5/11/64)

  Written by Richard Matheson

  Producer: Buck Houghton

  Director: John Brahm

  Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

  Music: Nathan Scott

  Cast: Virginia: Phyllis Thaxter Alex: Alex Nicol Mr. Wilkinson: Wallace Rooney Mother: Helen Brown Alex (age 10): Rickey Kelman

  Youre looking at the house of the late Mrs. Henrietta Walker. This is Mrs. Walker herself as she appeared twenty-five years ago. And this, except for isolated objects, is the living room of Mrs. Walkers house, as it appeared in that same year. The other rooms upstairs and down are much the same. The time, however; is not twenty-five years ago but now. The house of the late Henrietta Walker is, you see, a house which belongs almost entirely to the past, a house which, like Mrs. Walkers clock here, has ceased to recognize the passage of time. Only one element is missing now, one remaining item in the estate of the late Mrs. Walker: her son Alex, thirty-four years of age and, up till twenty minutes ago, the so-called perennial bachelor. With him is his bride, the former Miss Virginia Lane. Theyre returning from the city hall in order to get Mr. Walkers clothes packed, make final arrangements for the sale of the house, lock it up and depart on their honeymoon. Not a complicated set of tasks, it would appear, and yet the newlywed Mrs. Walker is about to discover that the old adage (You cant go home again has little meaning in the Twilight Zone.

  Arriving at the house, Alex is overwhelmed with nostalgia for his boyhood.

  Virginia suspects the spirit of Alexs mother is exerting her influence, a suspicion supported by an old, supposedly-broken radio playing the womans favorite song, a broken clock ticking, and the reappearance of long-gone furniture, appliances, magazines and homemade fudge. The allure of the past grows stronger: Alex refuses to sell the house. Then Alexs mother appears on the stairs and confronts Virginia. But it is not her wish to return to the pastit is Alexs. Alex changes back into a boy again, ^ then tells Virginia to get out. She doesfilled with a mixture of disgust, horror and loss.

  Exit Miss Virginia Lane, formerly and most briefly Mrs. Alex Walker. She has just given up a battle and in a strange way retreated, but this has been aretreat back to reality. Her opponent, Alex Walker, will now and forever hold a line that exists in the past. He has put a claim on a moment in time and is not about to relinquish it. Such things do happen in the Twilight Zone.”

  Richard Mathesons story is an interesting one, but somehow Young Mans Fancy never really hits the mark.

  The ending, I hated, says Matheson. It was the way I wrote it, the story being that the boy was causing it, not the mother. Its just that the mother didnt look menacing, she just looked a little worn out, like Stella Dallas or something. It didnt have the impact it should have had. She should have been kind of horrifying, so that when Phyllis Thaxter started to tell her off you thought that there was a confrontation here like in The Uninvited. But there wasnt that feeling to it. And then the little boy came out and he wasnt very good either, which kind of blew the whole point of the show.

  FIVE CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN EXIT (12/22/61)

  Written by Rod Serling

  Producer: Buck Houghton

  Director: Lamont Johnson

  Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

  Music: stock

  Makeup: William Tuttle

  Cast: The Major: William Windom The Clown: Murray Matheson The Ballerina: Susan Harrison The Tramp: Kelton Garwood The Bagpipe Player: Clark Allen Little Girl: Mona Houghton Woman: Carol Hill

  Clown, hobo, ballet dancer, bagpiper, and an army major a collection of question marks. Five improbable entities stuck together into a pit of darkness. No logic, no reason, no explanation; just a prolonged nightmare in which fear, loneliness and the unexplainable walk hand in hand through the shadows. In a moment well start collecting clues as to the whys, the whats and the wheres. We will not end the nightmare, well only explain it because this is the Twilight Zone.

  The five characters find themselves trapped inside an enormous, featureless cylinder, with no memory of who they are nor how they got there. After various speculations on the nature of their imprisonment including the theory that they might be in Hell the Major hits on a plan of escape. With the other four forming a human ladder, he is ultimately able to reach the rim of the cylinder and climb over. Unfortunately, he loses his balance and falls into the snow far below. The truth is revealed: the five characters are actually nothing more than dolls; their prison a Christmas toy donation barrel. A little girl spies the Major and returns him to the barrel.

  Just a barrel, a dark depository where are kept the counterfeit, make-believe pieces of plaster and cloth, wrought in the distorted image of human life. But this added, hopeful note: perhaps they are unloved only for the moment. In the arms of children there can be nothing but love. A clown, a tramp, a bagpipe player, a ballet dancer and a major. Tonighfs cast of players on the odd stage known as the Twilight Zone.

  Rarely can the plot of an episode be summed up so completely in its title. Five Characters in Search of an Exit is a drama with the fewest possible of props. For most of the show, the five actors are all that can be seen, with the exception of the blank, curving wall of the cylinder.

  It was like a theater experience, says director Lamont Johnson, like working on a unit set in the theater, and Ive done a lot of theater so it didnt hold any particular problems for me.

  As for the odd cylinder, Johnson says, The barrel was two different sets. One was vertical, the other was horizontal or at an angle so that we could cant it and make it at whatever angle we felt we needed for the camera. Thus, when the characters stood on each others shoulders, the set was actually tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, with a mattress at the bottom just in case anyone should accidentally slide down. As to what the set was made of, director of photography George Clemens says, It was a round aluminum set that we just kept moving around. And I could not use direct lighting, I used what we call indirect lighting, reflected. I had a great big sheet that was treated so as to reflect light.

  The greatest enjoyment from Five Characters in Search of an Exit stems from the dialogue between the ultra-serious, prone-to-hysteria Army Major and the ridiculous, ever-facetious, and utterly charming clown. In his white clown face, with potted plant for a hat, Murray Matheson is delightful, doing somersaults and fatalistically refusing to ever take matters too seriously. I was upside-down for most of the time, Matheson recalls, but I started as a dancer on the stage and so that part of it was easy for me.

  As the Major, William Windom provides a perfect counterpoint to Matheson, loud, belligerent, impatient. Of the part, Windom says, I just poured on the coal. You try to make it undoll-like as long as you can, which isnt hard to do, because theyre all sort of strange people.

  The people werent the only strange thingthe dolls were, too. As the camera pans from doll to doll at the end of the episode, we see that the figures are clearly not the actors in makeup, yet their faces bear a marked resemblance to the actors. One would assume that tiny replicas were fashioned, but in reality, these figures were actually life-size copies of the actors. With each of them, a life mask was made, then painted to look like a doll. Says makeup artist William Tuttle, They sent out and got some mannequin bodies, so that we just did the heads. Charlie Schram did most of them.

  For Buck Houghton, Five Characters in Search of an Exit held special anxieties; the little girl who places the army-major doll back in the barrel at the end of the episode was played by his daughter Mona. She was terribly nervous about
the whole thing, he recalls, and she was a very active child in the first place, she spent her days in motion. So I just took her out and walked her around the backlot until she was so goddamn tired that she couldnt be nervous. I must have walked her three miles

  .TO SERVE MAN (3/2/62)

  Written by Rod Serling

  Producer: Buck Houghton

  Director: Richard L. Bare

  Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

  Music: stock

  Cast: Chambers: Lloyd Bochner Kanamit: Richard Kiel Pat: Susan Cummings Citizen Gregori:

  Theodore Marcuse Reporter #1: Will J. White Reporter #2: Gene Benton Colonel #1: Bartlett Robinson Colonel #2: Carlton Young Secy. General: Hardie Albright Senor Valdes: Robert Tafur M. Leveque: Lomax Study Scientist: Nelson Olmstead Man #1: Charles Tannen Man #2: James L. Wellman Woman #1: Adrienne Marden Woman #2: Jeanne Evans

  Respectfully submitted for your perusal a Kanamit. Height: a little over nine feet. Weight: in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds. Origin: unknown. Motives? Therein hangs the tale, for in just a moment we’re going to ask you to shake hands, figuratively, with a Christopher Columbus from another galaxy and another time. This is the Twilight Zone

  The Kanamits arrive on Earth with seemingly one purpose in mind: to aid mankind in every possible way using their superior technology. They end famine, supply a cheap power source and provide defensive force fields. Armies become obsolete. Although some distrust them, the Kanamits appear totally altruistic, a fact supported by a Kanamit book left at the U.N. Once translated, the title reads To Serve Man. Thousands book passage to the Kanamits home planet, including Michael Chambers, a U.S. decoding expert. Meanwhile, however, his assistant Pat is trying to translate the Kanamit books text. As Chambers prepares to board ship, Pat frantically rushes up. Shes succeeded in her attemptsTo Serve Man is a cookbook! Chambers tries to escape, but a Kanamit forces him into

  the ship, which then blasts off. Helplessly, Chambers finds himself bound for another planetand some aliens dinner table!

  The recollections of one Michael Chambers, with appropriate flashbacks and soliloquy. Or more simply stated, the evolution of man, the cycle of going from dust to dessert, the metamorphosis from being the ruler of a planet to an ingredient in someones soup. Its tonights bill of fare on the Tzvilight Zone.

  Adapted by Serling from the short story of the same name by Damon Knight To Serve Man has one of the most shocking punchlines of any episode.

  Damon Knight: To Serve Man was written in 1950, when I was living in Greenwich Village and my unhappy first marriage was breaking up. I wrote it in one afternoon, while my wife was out with another man. Serling kept the basics of Knights story, but made some changes, the first of which was in the aliens themselves. In the story, the Kanamit (singular: Kanama) look something like pigs and something like people. In his script, Serling made them nine feet tall and essentially humanoid, noting, At the moment, no one knows whether we cast this part, or make it! As they appear in the show, the Kanamits (singular: Kanamit) resemble angels gone to seed, with full-length robes, high-domed heads, and just a hint of corruption about the eyes and mouth. The effect is striking, with seven-foot-two Richard Kiel (later to play the character Jaws in several James Bond films) playing the various Kanamits.

  Damon Knight found this all to his liking. I thought the adaptation was kind of neatit made me famous in Milford, Pennsylvania; suddenly everybody knew who I was. I didnt mind the aliens being acromegalic giants, because I knew they couldnt film my pig-people without making it look like a Disney film. The only thing that bugged me was Serlings treating the alien language as if it were just another kind of code.

  In Knights original story, a friend of the narrators, both of whom are U.N. translators at the beginning of the story, manages to steal a Kanamit book. Using material from Kanamit bulletin boards and an extremely limited English-Kanamit dictionary issued by the aliens to the human staff members at the Kanamit Embassy, the two are able to translate the title of the book into How to Serve Man. The narrator goes off to a vacation in Canada. He returns to find that his friend has decoded the first paragraph of the book and discovered, of course, that its a cookbook.

  For some reason, Serling decided to change this. In the show, the Kanamit deliberately leaves the book at the U.N. A staff of cryptographers led by Lloyd Bochner attempts to decipher the alien language as though it were some secret code, which is utterly ludicrous. Without some sort of interplanetary Rosetta stone, deciphering an unknown language would be impossible.

  This isnt to say that Knights story isnt without dubious assertions, too, such as the fact that the word serve would have the same double meaning in Kanamit as in English. About the double meaning of to serve, says Knight, I tried to cover myself by having the narrators friend remark that some of the idioms were very much like English. (In fact, French and Italian have the same double meaning, and in German and Swedish the word is almost the same; but I didnt know that then.)

  Finally, there is the curiously apt name of Kanamit. But Knight asserts, Kanamit isnt intentionally a pun on cannibal. Perhaps not but then again …

  THE JUNGLE (12/1/61)

  Written by Charles Beaumont

  Producer: Buck Houghton

  Director: William Claxton

  Director of Photography:George T. Clemens

  Music: stock

  Cast: Alan Richards: John Dehner Doris Richards:

  Emily McLaughlin Chad Cooper: Walter Brooke Templeton: Hugh Sanders Hardy: Howard Wright Sinclair: Donald Foster Taxi Driver: Jay Overholts Derelict: Jay Adler

  The caracass of a goat, a dead finger, a few bits of broken glass and stone and Mr. Alan Richards, a modem man of a modem age, hating with all his heart something in which he cannot believe and preparing although he doesnt know it to take the longest walk of his life, right down to the center of the Twilight Zone.

  Returned home to New York from a hydroelectric project in Africa, engineer Alan Richards scoffs at the voodoo lion curse placed on him by a group of witch doctors who are angered because he plans to erect a dam on their ancestral land. However, he is taken aback when a dead goat appears

  on his doorstep. To protect him, his superstitious wife surreptitiously slips him an anti-lion charm, but he inadvertently leaves this in a bar late at night, then discovers his car wont start. A wind comes up, accompanied by jungle sounds. Feeling pursued, Richards boards a taxi, but when it stops at a red light the driver slumps over dead. The sounds grow louder. Richards desperately races through the park on foot until he reaches his apartment. Inside, all is quiet. Then a low growl issues from the bedroom. A lion has killed his wife. Seeing him, the beast springs.

  Some superstitions, kept alive by the long night of ignorance, have their own special power. Youll hear of it through a jungle grapevine in a remote comer of the Twilight Zone

  Charles Beaumonts first contribution to the third season was this tension-filled little tale about a voodoo curse that reaches all the way from the heart of Africa to the streets of New York City. The original short story appeared in 1954 in If magazine and later in his collection Yonder (Bantam, 1958).

  The Jungle takes place entirely in the city, and one senses that it might be more effective if we were shown a bit of Africa, in the beginning, so that the threat might seem less obscure. Even so, the episode has its effective moments, such as when John Dehner (last seen in The Lonely) is riding in a cab that has stopped for a red light. A moment passes on the dark street. The light turns green. No movement. Driver, says Dehner, the lights green. You can go now. No reply, no movement. Driver, the lights green Dehner reaches over to touch the man on the shoulder. The man slumps over sideways … dead.

  Another forceful moment (well directed by William Claxton) is when Dehner finally reaches the sanctuary of his apartment. The drums have stopped, all is quiet. Out of breath but feeling secure, Dehner pours himself a drink. As he raises it to his lips, a low growl issues from the bedroom. S
lowly, he opens the bedroom door. Sprawled on the bed is the dead body of his wife, above which stands a lion. The lion sees him and springs (a very effective point-of-view shot in which the lion jumped entirely over the camera).

  The Jungle plays upon our instinctual fear of being alone, of being chased, of the darkness, of the night. More than most people, Charles Beaumont was especially in tune with these fears, having often experienced them himself. A glimpse is provided by William F. Nolan: One night, I remember, we had gone to a late-night horror movie. Id parked my car that night in the parking lot of one of the big stores along Wilshire. We came out of the theater and we were walking back to the car, two

  supposedly sophisticated adults. And we got ourselves so hyped up talking about the horror film that wed seen and other horrors, and the kind of crazy people that are wandering the streets and can strike at you from the dark, from any building front, any alley, they could be there. Chuck was fascinated with all that stuff.

  When we got to the lot, we saw a car parked right next to mine. There were only two cars on the whole lot, my car and this other car, and some kind of figure was sitting there, kind of slumped over sideways and just kind of staring. I said, Oh shit, Chuck. That guy looks like some kind of maniac to me. Chuck said, Here are the possibilitiesChuck would always take his fingersHe could be, one, dead. He could be a dead man, and we certainly dont want to get involved with that. And I said, No, I dont want to get involved with some dead guy. Two, he could be some kind of pervert or killer, waiting for us to get in your car to strike. I said, Its possible he could be. I know this sounds crazy, but at that time of night, after what wed gone through, it seemed perfectly logical Or, three, he could be just an ordinary person waiting for his wife to come out of someplace. But if you were an ordinary person, what are you doing in a parking lot alone at three in the morning? I said, I dont know, Chuck, but I tell you one thing: were taking the bus home tonight!