Favorite Twilight Zone episode?

"Time Enough At Last". This poor man was apparently the only survivor of a nuclear attack and is understandably despondent. He does rejoice, however, when he discovers the remains of a public library. He was a voracious reader who was unable to enjoy his love of books due to his harping shrew of a wife. He happily settles down to being happy reading his newly-found trove of books when his rather thick glasses fall from his head and are broken. The ending is just so marvelous.

Yes! With Burgess Meredith.

The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank

My favourite is the one that scares me the most. It's "The Howling Man". I can only watch it during the day. I don't know why it terrifies me so much but it does.

One that is equally haunting is "The Ring-A-Ding GIrl".

"The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street ." Stars Claude Akins and Jan Handzlik in his only role other than as Patrick kn "Auntie Mame."

I also like The Trouble with Templeton. Brian Aherne gives a great performance as an aging actor.

The one with Agnes Moorehead as the farmwife

"Spin Cycle" with Joan Crawford, where she can see the future happening while staring at the door of her front loader.

"Willoughby" That's the one about the Manhattan executive whose personal life is in chaos when his commuter train starts making stops at an idyllic turn of the century town.

I have quite a few. Here's some of the most notable:

𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐤𝐲 𝐖𝐚𝐬 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐝... IMO, the scariest of all 'Zone' episodes.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐇𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬 - "Climb off it, Marsha."

𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐏𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐔𝐩? Two state troopers follow reports of a crashed UFO to a diner, containing a group from a bus, plus one.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐞𝐚𝐫 - An episode which features the then-CBS logo in a surprising way.

A Piano in the House

"Nothing in the dark" with a young Robert Redford.

Mirror Image

Twenty-Two

To Serve Man

"Little girl lost" traumatized me, I thought the father would end up being cut in half.

The trade-ins

Masks is good. Basil Rathbone is a dying wealthy man who makes his terrible family wear hideous masks. It is great.

The one with Inger Stevens driving is great, too.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, I used to catch Twilight Zone reruns in the afternoons. The Hitch Hiker scared me to death back then. Here's a link to the Wikipedia page on this episode.

Hard to say. I could tell you which one was my LEAST favorite.

Queen of the Nile! Every DLers dream come true: she's 3,500-years-old but she looks like she's 35!

Definitely that one with the hospital full of staff with pig snout.

The Silence with Franchot Tone.

What R20 said.

Has anyone else ever noticed that when they take the bandages of that poor deformed blonde in the pig snout episode, it's Ellie May Clampett?

Midnight Sun

They dubbed Donna Douglass's voice with another actress but that is her in Eye of the Beholder..

My favorites are It’s A Good Life (“You’re a bad man!”) and Living Doll (“Talky Tina”).

Also wanted to add The Shelter.

"Night Call" Elderly spinster Dame Gladys Cooper keeps getting strange phone calls late at night when she is in bed and her help has gone home. The phone company is finally able to trace the calls -- and they are coming from the CEMETERY!

"The Hunt" with the old mountain man and his hound dog searching for respite after crossing Rainbow Bridge.

" A kind of Stopwatch" was one of my favorites. There were rumors of a gag reel where Richard Erdman was filmed walking into Rod Serling's epilogue using the stopwatch and pulling Serling's pants down. It was similar to what they did in the epilogue for "A World of his Own", but the one for "Stopwatch" was never aired.

Joan Crawford in the Night Gallery episode "Eyes"

R16, r17, that’s my favorite. I watched it when I was home alone, & it freaked me the fuck out. I love that the voice on the other end of the phone is played by the actress who voiced Maleficent & Cinderella’s stepmother. The paranoia & isolation the protagonist goes through reminds me of poor Rosemary Woodhouse.

Passage on the Lady Anne, Miniature, The Midnight Sun are my favorites.

In Praise of Pip really moves me.

The Howling Man because Robin Hughes ( a would-have-been DLer, I’m sure) is very hot.

Elegy really creeps me out.

Lol at Queen of the Nile being the DL episode….and this episode!

Forgot to add the one where the actor’s friend’s ghosts pretend to reject him so he’ll get on with his life. Is that the Templeton one?

Pretty sure it was a Twilight Zone episode, though I've never been able to find it.

Without disclosing the ending, it resolved that everyday puzzle, where did your glasses or keys go? They were here just a minute ago.

Of course the plot may explain why I can't find the episode, either.

The Odyssey of Flight 33........

An airliner gets caught in a time warp and goes back and forth trying to get back to its own time......

I still think of the ending narration when I hear a jet overhead....

A Global jet airliner, en route from London to New York on an uneventful afternoon in the year 1961, but now reported overdue and missing, and by now, searched for on land, sea, and air by anguished human beings, fearful of what they'll find. But you and I know where she is. You and I know what's happened. So if some moment, any moment, you hear the sound of jet engines flying atop the overcast—engines that sound searching and lost—engines that sound desperate—shoot up a flare or do something. That would be Global 33 trying to get home—from The Twilight Zone.

Wasn't there a similar episode involving a WWI pilot who somehow got lost and landed in WWII?

R38 And the lost pilot still looked liked he did 25 years before.

There's a place for him here.

Not Twilight Zone but Night Gallery. Many feel it's one of Serling's best works (reminiscent of some TZ episodes where men return to happier and easier times). However, it was written at the end of Serling's career and life and there's a power in the piece that is uncommon. They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar features one of the most touching performances you'll see from William Windom.

Franklin…The Fever

Mirror Image- Vera Miles meets herself at the bus station.

The only small issue I have with The Eye of the Beholder, is the actress’s voice. It reminds me of Nancy Kelly’s acting in The Bad Seed which I don’t like.

The episode where Bob Cummings is the pilot of a WWII bomber that crashes in the desert was inspired by actual events.

I'd forgotten Serling was just 50 when he died. Such accomplishment in such a short time. His Wikipedia entry has a lot of detail on his WWII experiences, which informed so much of his later work.

R16 - The Masks has Robert Keith (the father of Brian) not Basil Rathbone.

I like The Lonely. Has a beaut score by Bernard Herrmann.

Me too R5. Can’t get over the kid’s voice.

The incredible thing about The Twilight Zone is so many of the stories are still relevant and resonate today. For example, whenever Deaths-Head Revisited, the episode where a former German SS captain returns to Dachau and visited by the ghosts of his victims and especially its closing narration by Serling, I am reminded of the growing number of people who claim the Holocaust never happened or the numbers were exaggerated, etc. The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street still says so much about the general public's readiness to seek out enemies, even where there are none, to assign blame and turn on each other.

[quote]Joan Crawford in the Night Gallery episode "Eyes"

That was Steven Spielberg's first professional job as a director. Crawford was upset and wrote a letter to the producers that she didn't want to be directed by someone with no experience. He won her over and she became one of his earliest supporters, writing letters of support for him to her Hollywood friends. She and Spielberg remained friends for the rest of her life.They exchanged Christmas Cards!

[quote]One that is equally haunting is "The Ring-A-Ding GIrl".

Airing on MeTV in about 3 minutes.

R46, and directed by Ida Lupino.

and featuring Brooke Hayward the daughter of Margaret Sullavan.

[quote] Pretty sure it was a Twilight Zone episode, though I've never been able to find it. Without disclosing the ending, it resolved that everyday puzzle, where did your glasses or keys go? They were here just a minute ago.

R36, that's from the 1985 revival of the Twilight Zone, 𝐀 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐬 (Season 1, Episode 15, Segment 3), wherein each minute of time is described as a series of empty boxcars, their contents being assembled, sometimes months in advance, by construction crews. A couple (Adam Arkin and Karen Austin) accidentally awaken in a future minute which is still under construction, and a supervisor (Adolph Caesar) tells them they've seen too much, and cannot be allowed to re-enter the time stream; a chase ensues.

It's not classic 'Zone,' but it's pretty damned good.

What about, “Room for one more, honey!” That nurse should be a DL icon!

[quote] The one with Agnes Moorehead as the farmwife

She wasn’t a wife.

[quote] This poor man

He was an unpleasant man. He neglected his work at his job and he neglected helping his wife around the house because he wanted to sit on his ass and read all the time. Reading wasn’t a pastime with him, it was an obsession and he used it to keep reality from intruding on his little world. That’s why he got punished with his glasses falling off after the nuclear war. The world intruded on him yet again & required him face reality this time.

That might be a fair assessment of the episode, R57, and of its main character, Henry Bemis, were it not for the fact that both Bemis' wife and his boss are portrayed so unsympathetically that one cannot help but pity Bemis.

They’re pissed off at Bemis because of his constant refusal to do what he should be doing. He shortchanged customers at the bank because of his reading & chatting about books. The customer complains to the banker it’s a regular occurrence with Bemis. At home, his wife has dealt with his negligence in all things for years and has had enough. He’s a bookworm, which isn’t just some who likes to read, but is obsessive.

Today’s equivalent would be “you’ve always got that phone stuck in your face” or “get off that gaming console, get your ass outside & rake those leaves.” Mr Bemis was delighted after the atomic war to find himself in the 1960 equivalent of his mom’s basement. But in the end, he was just as screwed as everybody else whose world was destroyed by mankind. And that’s one of the messages of the episode. We now have the ability to destroy everything, including our greatest inventions, with our worst invention.

In an episode all about irony. Serling quotes the Robert Burns poem To a Mouse at the end of the show, referencing the line about the best laid plans of mice and men. Ironically, Burgess Meredith starred in the movie Of Mice and Men about 20 years before the Twilight Zone episode.

The Fear, featuring the recently deceased Peter Mark Richman when he was younger and hot.

R55 YES!! I was thinking the same thing.

Totally creepy.

She even looks like a drag queen when she shows up on the airplane.

I love the jazz theme played in the episode "The Chaser."

Arlene Martel often played “exotic” women, but she was a Jewish girl from Bronx.

The After Hours, wherein we learn Marsha White (Anne Francis) is a department store mannequin who now must return from her month living among humans in the outside world.

[quote] Arlene Martel often played “exotic” women, but she was a Jewish girl from Bronx.

You might want to mention that to Sarah Silverman.

I remember what freaked me out about After Hours was the wasp waists of the women. I wonder if they had to wear very tight girdles to achieve that look. Someone once measured female mannequins and found 100% were underweight & most were severely underweight, while very few male mannequins were underweight.

But where did Marsha find a mother in the outer world? And why would she need a solid gold thimble?

R54 Thank you. That explains why I could never find it.

It's amazing that a series that only ran for 5 seasons (156 episodes) is so well known as a cultural icon. Serling and his production team seemed to have a knack for selecting good talent and getting exceptional performances out of them.

I believe "To Serve Man" and "The Invaders" were Serling's favorite episodes personally. For me, the best ones seemed to be about human relationships and consequences, and time.

Ed Wynn was in 2 episodes: "One for the Angels" where he was a street peddler who attempted to cheat death by retiring from his job after making death agree to allow him one last pitch. Death instead attempts to take a child who was a friend, and Wynn is forced to stall death past midnight by pitching him worthless trinkets. He does so and accepts his fate when he packs up his good and asks death if he'd need them "up there?" He also played a grandfather obsessed with winding a clock, because he believed that if the clock stopped, he would immediately die. His daughter finally gets rid of the clock and he falls stricken as the clock slows down and eventually stops. He chooses to take this as his "death" and rebirth in which to spend time with his family.

"The Man in the Bottle" is a good one, in which a charming Joseph Ruskin plays a genie who grants a poor couple 4 wishes in which they have unexpected consequences, eventually putting the couple right back where they started.

"The Invaders" was one of the classic "plot twist" episodes, but also had no spoken dialog, with the wonderful Agnes Moorehead playing a poor woman living in a rural area who is beset by Martians.

Another favorite along the lines of "The Trouble with Templeton," in which the message is you can never go back, is "Static," in which an older man longs for the past via a magic radio that allows him to go back and rectify mistakes he had made in his life long ago.

Also, it DL fav Lucy and husbear Desi Arnaz who are ultimately responsible for TZ. They picked from the CBS Archive a script by a relatively unknown Rod Serling for production in their post-I Love Lucy Desilu Playhouse entitled "The Time Element," in which TZ frequenter Martin Basalm plays a psychiatrist with a patient who maintains that every time he goes to sleep, he returns to Pearl Harbor on December 6, 1941. Marty persuades the man to try to change the future in his "dream" and ultimately, the man falls asleep in the office to try to do so and becomes a victim of the attack in his dream and vanishes from the present. Marty then goes to a neighborhood bar and recognizes a photo of the man on the wall and is told that he died at Pearl Harbor. Pretty heavy stuff for only 17 years past the attack.

Another interesting one with a *slight* amount of relevance today is: "The Brain Center at Whipples," in which Richard Deacon plays the owner of a giant manufacturing company who is obsessed with efficiency and automation. He eventually completely automates his company until the machines begin to torment him (or he imagines it). His board of directors retires him and the final scene is him drinking in the bar with an employee he fired while complaining that machines dehumanize men and he feels cast aside like an old used part.

"There are many bromides applicable here: 'too much of a good thing', 'tiger by the tail', 'as you sow so shall you reap'. The point is that, too often, Man becomes clever instead of becoming wise; he becomes inventive and not thoughtful; and sometimes, as in the case of Mr. Whipple, he can create himself right out of existence. As in tonight's tale of oddness and obsolescence, in the Twilight Zone."

R67 I think the notion that Marsha was there to buy a gold thimble for her mother was simply some kind of made-up activity in her subconscious meant to lead her back to the department store, because her time on the outside world was up. .. That's why the only thing for sale on the 9th floor was a gold thimble. It didn't jog her memory enough, though, and at that point, she still didn't recognize the sales clerk or elevator operator as fellow mannequins. -jmho

Bemis being played by the irritating, untalented, and ugly Burgess Meredith was enough to make me glad that his glasses broke.

Now he only has his irritating, ugly self for company......ugh.

And Jacqueline de Witt is hilarious as his wife.

The room for one more episode was inspired by an old urban legend. Yes, they had those long before the internet and it goes back to the turn of the last century. In its various incarnations it involved a bus conductor and an elevator operator and Bennett Cerf included a version in a Random House anthology book in the 1940s. I think there was also a 1940s film that included it. Nonetheless a great episode.

Please spare the spoilers, everyone. Believe it or not, there is a crop of nascent viewers who want the full viewing enjoyment of exploring "new"Twilight Zone episodes.

I find its funny how the wife in Time Enough at Last crosses out the pages in Burgess' book. How long would that have taken?!

One of the reasons TZ remains memorable is that there hasn't been anything like it since. Only Alfred Hitchcock Presents is in the same league, and that was a different genre.

[quote]there hasn't been anything like it since.

There was The Outer Limits which was ABC's copy of The Twilght Zone.

[quote]But where did Marsha find a mother in the outer world? And why would she need a solid gold thimble?

What a really interesting question that I never thought about before.

[quote]I think the notion that Marsha was there to buy a gold thimble for her mother was simply some kind of made-up activity in her subconscious meant to lead her back to the department store, because her time on the outside world was up. .. That's why the only thing for sale on the 9th floor was a gold thimble. It didn't jog her memory enough, though, and at that point, she still didn't recognize the sales clerk or elevator operator as fellow mannequins.

And this, I think, is a perfectly brilliant explanation. Bravo!

One of my absolute favorite favorite episodes was "On Thursday We Leave for Home," in which the great James Whitmore plays the leader of a space colony from earth marooned on a strange planet who want to go back home. When the opportunity to do finally arrives, he tries to convince them to stay simply because he can't give up the power he's come to enjoy as the leader they look up to. Beautifully-written script by Rod Serling and a wonderful leading performance by Whitmore.

I know a lot of people hated the Carol Burnett episode, "Cavender Is Coming," but I enjoyed it because I thought both Carol and Jesse White were charming in their roles plus it was just a nice change-of-pace for TZ, which rarely did humorous episodes. I imagine both the laugh track and the fact the episode was intended as a backdoor pilot for a comedy series featuring Cavender didn't help.

I was shocked to see Jean Marsh in TZ.

Yes, R82 -- that was a good one.

R46 Well, in my head it has always been Mr. Basil Rathbone and I prefer to keep it that way.

The one where the 2 kids find a gateway to a children's paradise in their swimming pool and finally take it to get seay from their horrible parents.

And the one where the couple keep trying to escape a small town only to find that the town is part of a railroad set for the giant human girl whose pet toys they now are.

R85 that also had the terrible dubbing but they also messed up the ending. Everyone knew that it should have been revealed that the kindly Aunt was actually a witch and the kids names were Hansel and Gretel.

I recently watched the one with Ida Lupino as an aging movie star of the 1930s who refused to live in the present (1959) reality. I wouldn't say it's my favorite episode, but it was an interesting twist to the well-worn fading movie queen trope. When the character was offered a small part playing someone's mother, she bellowed, "I don't play mothers!" I pictured Hedy Lamarr having a similar fit when offered "The Female Animal" (1958).

[quote]The one where the 2 kids find a gateway to a children's paradise in their swimming pool and finally take it to get seay from their horrible parents.

"The Bewitchin' Pool," which was also the final episode of TZ.

That episode really scared me too. Whenever that tv show comes up in conversation, I always think of the hitchhiker episode.

I Inger Stevens drove that spiffy 1958-59 Mercury!

The one where a dimished Franchot Tone wagers a bet that the loquacious young braggart at his gentlemen's club can't remain silent for one year.

Spoiler alert:

It's a...

I forgot the name of it (and don't feel like googling) but I loved the episode with Cliff Robertson as a man with a family in the 19th century who ends up crossing over to the 20th century in his quest to find medicine for his ailing son.

R93, A Hundred Yards Over the Rim.

That's the one. Thank you, R94.

I like A World of Difference because Eileen Ryan plays such a vindictive bitch.