Twilight Zone: The Movie

Twilight Zone: The Movie (John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, George Miller, 1983) The well-regarded TV series created by Rod Serling—to create a broader palette to write with, while also giving him a chance to write metaphorically about social themes without the pearl-clutching of sensitive advertisers—is one of those hallmarks of television creativity, as well as being the inspiration for creative thinkers the world over. It's probably running right now, this very minute, on some channel in the world as it's an evergreen series, one that never loses its charm or ability to chill...or preach. Every episode, narrated by Serling himself, offered some little lesson in humanity, some softball sermon, some irony, that offered "for your consideration" that one couldn't escape some aspect of goodness or frailty, even in one's escapism.

 

It could also creep the be-jee-sus out of you.

 

It was a staple for the television viewer uninterested in westerns, soap operas or family comedies, but more invested in science fiction, anthologies and speculative stories with a twist...and a point of view.

That included many of the up-and-coming film-makers learning their craft during the time the series was broadasting, the most prominent of which was Steven Spielberg, who secured a deal with the Serling Estate to make a tribute film, using the anthology format, some old hands, and recreating the show's magic utilizing widescreen, color, and the new diversity in special effects. At the same time he brought in scenarist Richard Matheson (who'd written 16 of the original episodes) and composer Jerry Goldsmith (who'd written the background scores for seven of the original episodes). Three of the four stories would be "re-imaginings" of old episodes and one would be completely original. Four different directors would be involved. The narration for each segment was done by Burgess Meredith, who'd starred in four of the original broadcasts.

 

One cannot discuss the movie without mentioning "the accident" while filming the first segment when star Vic Morrow and two Vietnamese child-actors were killed during a night-time helicopter shoot. All were killed instantly—and horrifically—when the vehicle crashed on them during what looked like a particularly chaotic sequence involving an unsupported vehicle, waist-high water with spray, children being carried by the actor, and explosions. Plus, there were many violations of safety and child employment. The tragedy cast a pall over the movie that it was never able to shake: Spielberg basically disowned the movie, director George Miller quit it, leaving the post-production of his segment to Joe Dante. One has to judge the results of what's on the screen dispassionately, and it's almost impossible to do with Twilight Zone: The Movie.

 

Segment One: Time Out (d: John Landis) 

You're about to meet an angry man. Mr. William Connor, who carries on his shoulder a chip the size of the national debt. This is a sour man, a lonely man, who's tired of waiting for the breaks that come to others, but never to him. Mr. William Connor, whose own blind hatred is about to catapult him into the darkest corner of the Twilight Zone.

 

A bigot, Bill Connor (Vic Morrow),* walks into a bar, but it's no joke. Bitter from being passed over for a promotion, he drown his sorrows and vents his besotted spleen, hurling invective at Jews, African Americans, the "usual suspects" on the White Supremacist List. Leaving the bar, he seems to be walking in other people's shoes...and times...as he is mistaken for a Jew in Nazi Germany, a "Negro" facing a lynching in the 1950's South, and a Vietnamese citizen in the Vietnam War. After caroming from time to time, he is last seen on a transport train headed for a concentration camp, unseen by his companions from the bar.

 

Landis' segment was totally original (if reminiscent of some of Serling's fables of bad men getting their comeuppance ironically while also presaging TV's "Quantum Leap" by a few years) and Morrow's performance in what is basically a one-man show is very strong. Landis shoots it like a low budget TV episode, making it feel much more like an episode from the original series. A not-too good episode, one should mention. One wishes—for Morrow's sake—that they could have hit it out of the park. It would have been small consolation for an unnecessary tragedy.

Segment Two: Kick the Can (d: Steven Spielberg)
It is sometimes said that where there is no hope, there is no life. Case in point: the residents of Sunnyvale Rest Home, where hope is just a memory. But hope just checked into Sunnyvale, disguised as an elderly optimist, who carries his magic in a shiny tin can.

 

Adapted from the original episode written by George Clayton Johnson by Johnson, Matheson and E.T. scenarist Melissa Mathison (credited as Josh Rogan), Spielberg's segment (filmed in six days) takes place at a rest home, which welcomes a new resident, Mr. Bloom (Scatman Crothers), eternal optimist, who encourages the oldsters to think young by the simple act of playing a game—kick the can—and, miraculously (not because it's Spielberg, but because it's John and TZ), they do become young little kids. 

 

That's where the TV episode ended, but the older, wiser scribes continue the story, making the kids realize that they've already had full lives that they couldn't recapture again and so—with one notable adventuring exception—they return to their aged forms, older, if spiritually renewed.

 

Spielberg almost did "The Monsters Are Due on Marple Street" but, after the accident, he changed stories, not wanting to do something with a night-time shoot, special effects and with kids involved. There are still kids in "Kick the Can" (he'd just finished E.T. and loved that shoot, working with children; he hadn't yet made Hook, which cured him of it), but no special effects and no risks. No real enjoyment, either, unless your preference is for oldsters and tykes acting very, very sincerely.

Segment Three: It's a Good Life! (d: Joe Dante) 

Portrait of a woman in transit. Helen Foley, age 27. Occupation: schoolteacher. Up until now, the pattern of her life has been one of unrelenting sameness, waiting for something different to happen. Helen Foley doesn't know it yet, but her waiting has just ended.

One of the creepiest of the original "Twilight Zone" episodes was based on Jerome Bixby's 1953 short story "It's a Good Life!" which featured Bill Mumy as little Anthony Fremont, the six year old "head of the household" due to his murderous psychic powers. A haunting, scary little story—which probably resonates with any adult who has children—"It's a Good Life!" has a nightmarish quality filtered through a young child's imagination, but doesn't offer any way out. Anthony's family is stuck in their situation and the only way to survive is to placate their kid's murderous impulses. The movie version is a bit looser.

 

Dante, working with Matheson's screenplay, complicates it and actually resolves it, while also filling it with childish nightmare images designed to both evoke horror and a laugh at the bizarreness of it all. Foley (Kathleen Quinlan), who is on her way to a new job nearly runs into Anthony (Jeremy Licht) on his bicycle and offers him a ride home. There she meets his family—made up of TZ alums Kevin McCarthy, William Schallert, and Patricia Barry as well as Nancy Cartwright and Cherie Currie—and the one's who are actually ambulatory are a nervous bunch. It turns out Anthony has earlier murdered his family and these people are replacements and subject to his whims, all the products of a child's hyper mind.

And (one should add) Dante's. Dante had just made The Howling and it so impressed Spielberg that he offered the "Twilight Zone" deal to him as well as the directing post for the forthcoming Gremlins. Audiences probably weren't prepared for the combination of goofy nightmare that Dante in all his glory could produce, and his ideas—produced with the help of make-up man Rob Bottin—are giddy atrocities that will either make you spit-up your popcorn or vomit it. It's a wild Easter-egg filled roller-coaster through a spook-house that's creepy-funny. And it even manages to have a happy ending. After Spielberg's segment, Dante's was a sharp slap in the face with a cream-pie. Oh, but just you wait...

 

Segment Four: Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (d: George Miller) 

What you're looking at could be the end of a particularly terrifying nightmare. It isn't. It's the beginning. Introducing Mr. John Valentine, air traveler. His destination: the Twilight Zone.

Please fasten your seat-belts. We're expecting some turbulence. The darling of the Australian film renaissance and director of Mad Max and the recent hit The Road Warrior is restricted to merely the interior of an airplane in this story of a very nervous passenger (John Lithgow) on the worst flight of his life. Already afraid of flying, his terror is increased exponentially by irritating passengers, a flight-path through a thunderstorm, and...a gremlin on the wing of the plane throwing things into a jet engine, threatening to make it crash.

 

The original is remembered for its simple concept and a performance by William Shatner that pre-sages scenery-chewing to come. But, Lithgow out-Shatners by an additional over-the-top 20,000 feet in a performance that is hysterical in both senses of the term. He's aided and abetted by Miller's restless—and at times, anarchic—camera and even some literal eye-popping special effects. Tight, efficient, and relentless, Miller's segment is absolutely brilliant...and always seems to come up in conversations on plane flights. It's the perfect capper in an uneven movie.

John Landis also did a prologue section, which opened the film before the titles—two dudes-in-flannel (Albert Brooks, Dan Aykroyd) spend a nighttime road-trip amusing each other. First, the driver teases by turning off his headlights at random, then they play a TV-theme song guessing game, which leads to talking about "The Twilight Zone" and ends with "Hey. You wanna see something really scary?"

Besides the Dante and Miller segments, that prelude is one of the things that people remember about the movie. There had been plans for certain characters to cross-over into other segments, but a late-in-the-game reshuffling of their order and a general torpor over the film due to the filming deaths nixed those plans.

 

The film did make money, but suffered blistering reviews—critics always mentioned the deaths and took pot-shots at Spielberg. No movie is worth a human life, but that would be true if the result was a masterpiece, as well. TZ's critics seemed to think the sin worse if the movie is only semi-successful. So much for moral high ground. But, people remember the best things about it—"Really Scary" "It's a Good Life!" and "Nightmare at 20,000 Ft." There have been a few revivals of the series (and probably always will be), and other similarly themed series from "The Outer Limits" to "Black Mirror." Spielberg even tried his hand in the game with his series "Amazing Stories," which served as a clearing house for his ideas and a proving ground for directors, old and new.

 

But, the movie lives up to the Serling grandiloquence—whether intentionally or not—of lying "somewhere between the pit of one's fears and the summit of his knowledge."

* The TZ movie is full of Easter eggs and little buried bits of trivia throughout: Bill Connor's name is a one-off of "Bull" Connor, the Alabama Sheriff known for his brutal treatment of Civil Rights protestors, "Helen Foley" is the name of a teacher of Serling's (and was used in a TZ episode), and Serling himself appears in the blink of an eye in the Main Title. Dante's episode is rife with actors from the series, including a cameo by Bill Mumy, who played the uber-kid in the original episode of "It's a Good Life" as well as mentioning city-names from other episodes.

A Big Hand for the Little Lady

A Big Hand for the Little Lady (Fielder Cook,1966) This entertaining little gambling drama came out of a television presentation—its director, Fielder Cook, was one of the pioneer directors of live television, and one of the few to stick to the medium, only occasionally making a film for the movie studios, finding them more restricting. The source was a drama for "The Dupont Show of the Week" entitled "Big Deal in Laredo" and starring Walter Matthau, Teresa Wright and Zachary Scott. It was written by Sidney Carroll who wrote the screenplay for The Hustler, and knew a thing or two about the mind-games while playing games.

It is the day of the "big" poker game in Laredo, Texas. The richest men in the state all gather on this particular day for a high-stakes game that is legendary throughout the state, having taken place over sixteen years. Undertaker Benson Tropp (Charles Bickford) careens through the Texas territory in his horse-drawn hearse, picking up the participants: lawyer Otto Habershaw (Kevin McCarthy), who abandons a closing argument in a murder trial to make the game; cattle-baron Henry Drummond (Jason Robards) skips out on his daughter's wedding. When the three get to Sam's saloon in Laredo, they are joined by Jesse Buford (John Qualen) and Dennis Wilcox (Robert Middleton) and convene to the backroom of Sam's, leaving the bar-flies to hang out and conjecture about what might be happening behind the door of the invitation-only exclusive "big game."

Not much it turns out. The millionaires all know each other and the game proceeds without many changes except the heighth of the chips.

Then, as they are wont to do, a stranger comes into town. Meredith (Henry Fonda) is moving with his family—his wife Mary (Joanne Woodward) and son Jackie (Gerald Michenaud)—to buy a house and property in the neighboring county, but a busted wagon wheel keeps them put in Laredo until the blacksmith can repair it. They come to the crowded saloon to pass the time until they can get on the trail again.

The prim and proper family makes an odd contrast to the rough and tumble saloon dwellers, but Meredith seems more comfortable in the honky-tonk, and is genuinely interested in the poker game going on in the backroom when he gets wind of it. He gets "the gambler's itch" and pretty soon, he's eyeing the families' stakes for the $500 to buy in. Mary argues with her husband that they've scrimped and saved for a long time for the stake and she doesn't want him risking it. Then, there's his gambling addiction, which he's resisted long enough for them to get that stake. But, that wagon-wheel needs fixing and if they just get a little more...

The regulars at the poker table, particularly Drummond, object to Meredith joining, but Habershaw, taken with Mary, presses the others to let Meredith join the game. 

Things start out okay—Meredith is only a passable poker player—but pretty soon, he's hooked and he starts to lose. He becomes increasingly agitated and starts looking the worse for wear. While Mary frets in the saloon, Meredith is sweating through some mediocre hands until he gets a hand that he knows he can win, but he doesn't have the money to meet Drummond's raised bet. The strain causes Meredith to collapse, stricken.

The town doctor (Burgess Meredith) is called, and he orders Meredith taken out of the room and back to his office for examination, leaving Mary in the situation to play the hand and either lose or keep the family farm. It does not bode well when she turns to Drummond and asks politely "How do you play this game?" 

How does she get out of it? How does she play the hand without the collateral funds to make a bet? How will she buy the farm...without buying the farm?

This is where A Big Hand for the Little Lady really gets interesting...and entertaining. Everything that has gone before is merely a set-up for the rest of the movie and how "the hand she is dealt" plays out.

A Big Hand for the Little Lady crosses a couple of genres. It is, on the surface, a western, that form that allows the problems of today to be seen in a silvered mirror of the past, making the issues complicated in today's world, simpler and deconstructed and standing out in fine relief. It is, in some instances, a comedy, in how it sets up a male-female tension. And it is a satire of how men can be "played," especially by forces that may be outside of their comfort zones.

But, it is also something of a feminist tract (Don't run away, boys, the film is entertaining) and might serve as an audio-visual aid to "The Feminine Mystique," illustrating the secret power of women (not so much hidden, but societally repressed) in a world dominated by subjugating men. It is fascinating to behold not only in a western, but also in something so light (when its equivalent is present in the darker, more resolute—and, one has to admit "camp"—Johnny Guitar). That is part of the delight of the construction and the big pay-out for A Big Hand for the Little Lady.

The Prize (1963)

The Prize (Mark Robson, 1963) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had a huge hit in 1959 with Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest. A collaboration between Hitchcock and screenwriter Ernest Lehman (after an abandoned attempt to make anything interesting of The Wreck of the Mary Deare) it was a  summation and expansion of many of Hitchcock's "greatest hits" cataloging many of the themes and fears throughout the director's career with the added element of a crazed paranoia produced by unknown forces involved in an elaborate plot that the hapless "man alone" protagonist stumbles into quite by accident.

M-G-M wasn't too concerned with all that "substance" stuff; all they knew was they had a hit with North By Northwest. They also had a property—Irving Wallace's 1962 best-selling pot-boiler, "The Prize," about the intrigues behind the awarding of the various Nobel Prizes in Stockholm. To adapt it, they asked Lehman and the results, although very different in details, are remarkably similar to North By Northwest. Director Mark Robson had none of Hitchcock's wit or panache, but he could stage things well, move things along briskly and occasionally do things with a certain amount of humor. But, the screenplay retains the same basic plot structure—a roguish ne'er-do-well (in this case, Paul Newman) begins to suspect that an elaborate conspiracy is going on, and even though he sees things that beggar the imagination, no one believes him and think he's either drunk or delusional.  

Andrew Craig (Paul Newman) is not having a very good time in Sweden

Newman plays Andrew Craig, an American novelist (hence there's a propensity for people to think he's overly imaginative) who's been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Trouble is, he's an American with a bit of an attitude, a weakness for drink and women, and the innate feeling that he's a bit of a fraud as he hasn't written anything worthwhile for some time (and thus considers his award a bit of a fraud, too). All this ingratiates him no end with the Nobel committee (led by Leo G. Carroll) and the crumpet of an attaché assigned to keep him in line (Elke Sommer...really?). Not that the other recipients are any more stable: the French couple (Gérard Oury and Micheline Presle) winning for chemistry are a husband-wife team accompanied by his secretary-mistress (Jacqueline Beer); the two doctors winning for medicine (Sergio Fantoni, Kevin McCarthy) are feuding over duplicated research, and the recipient for physics, Dr. Max Stratman (Edward G. Robinson)—accompanied by his niece Emily (Diane Baker)—is acting strangely.

Okay, you're dancing with Elke Sommer, but Edward G. Robinson is distracting you.
No wonder everybody thinks he's odd.

Not that anyone but Craig notices. Craig met Stratman the first night in Stockholm at a chance encounter, but after the second night, Stratman doesn't recognize him. And the more he protests that something is "off," the less he's believed. Pretty soon, he's being attacked by an odd-looking knife-wielding assassin (Sacha Pitoëff) on the Katarina elevator and sent falling into the Slussen lock, is led to an apartment where he finds a dead body (but when he returns with the police, there's no sign of it and the man's "wife" says he's merely out), is nearly run over by a truck on a narrow bridge, then has his clothes stolen after ducking into a nudist's convention to avoid being killed, and must sneak back into his Plaza Suite hotel wrapped in a towel.

And no one takes him seriously?

Turns out he's right all along (of course). Stratman has been kidnapped by Soviet agents and replaced with a double, unbeknownst to everyone but Emily. The doppelganger will then denounce the West at the ceremonies and stage a faux-defection. And only a depressed, debauched, and desperate laureate stands between it and scandal (and he's too busy causing scandals in the meantime).  

Newman seems like he's having a fine time playing it, even if he's not the deftest touch at comedy (in other words, he's no Cary Grant), Sommer looks winsomely perturbed throughout and Robinson, old pro that he is, plays his parts with a heavy weight that makes the stakes seem more important for his commitment. Lehman does his best trying to find Swedish touchstones to lend color and comedy, but he's at his most successful using the hotel's staff as his greek chorus, commenting and double-taking at the shenanigans going on. It's a fun time, but there are no basic creepy set-pieces (like N by N-W's meeting in a vast expanse of day-lit prairie, rather than a dark alley) that can raise the tension just for the contrariness of the concept  Diverting, yes, but a little off-direction (compass-wise).

Newman would go on to make his own movie with Alfred Hitchcock—Torn Curtain in 1966—in which he plays a theoretical mathematician who defects to the Soviet Union.