Twilight Zone Companion (40 page)

The Gift is no gift to fans of The Twilight Zone, however. It is pretentious, stereotypical, and insulting, particularly to anyone of Mexican heritage. With the exception of Pedro, the doctor, and a blind guitar player (Vladimir Sokoloff), all the people in the village are presented as superstitious, fearful peasants who prefer to see the alien as an agent of the Devil rather than as a friendly emissary from beyond the stars.

The Gift has a guitar score composed and performed by Laurindo Almeida, one of the great classical guitarists, and thats about all it has to recommend it. The child playing Pedro is a beautiful child, but as Buck Houghton freely admits, He couldnt act at all. As the alien, Geoffrey Horne doesnt do much better, delivering his lines as though he wished he were serving tables somewhere instead.

HOCUS-POCUS AND FRISBY (4/13/62)

Written by Rod Serling

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: Lamont Johnson

Directors of Photography: George T. Clemens and Jack Swain

Music: Tom Morgan

Makeup: William Tuttle

Cast: Frisby: Andy Devine Alien #1: Milton Selzer Alien #2: Larry Breitman Mitchell: Howard McNear Scanlan: Dabbs Greer Old Man: Clem Bevans Frisbys alien Alien #3: Peter Brocco

The reluctant gentleman with the sizeable mouth is Mr. Frisby. He has all the drive of a broken camshaft and the aggressive vinegar of a corpse. As youve no doubt gathered, his big stock in trade is the tall tale. Now, what he doesnt know is that the visitors out front are a very special breed, destined to change his life beyond anything even his fertile imagination could manufacture. The place is Pitchville Flats, the time is the present. But Mr. Frisbys on the first leg of a rather fanciful journey into the place we call the Twilight Zone.

Taking his self-aggrandizing tales at face value, aliens masquerading as humans spirit Frisby away to their flying saucer, with the intention of taking him home as a zoo specimen after all, he advertised himself as the optimum human. Unable to convince them of their error, Frisby decides to relax by playing his harmonica and discovers that the sound knocks the aliens out! Frisby escapes, and the frightened aliens hurriedly depart. Returning to the combination general store and gas station he owns, Frisby finds all his friends waiting for him; its a surprise birthday party. But when he tries to tell them of his abduction no one believes him!

Mr Somerset Frisby, who might have profited by reading an Aesop fable about a boy who cried wolf. Tonights tall tale from the timberlands of the Twilight Zone.

Hocus-Pocus and Frisby was a fairly funny piece. Andy Devine, with his scraped-wall of a voice, is well-cast as the big blowhard Frisby. Thealiens, with their whole-head latex masks, arent very convincing, but since this is a comedy thats not terribly important.

PERSON OR PERSONS UNKNOWN (3/23/62)

Written by Charles Beaumont

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: John Brahm

Director of Photography:

Robert W. Pittack Music: stock

Cast: David Gurney: Richard Long Dr. Koslenko: Frank Silvera Wilma #1: Shirley Ballard Wilma #2: Julie Van Zandt Woman Clerk: Betty Harford Sam Baker: Ed Glover Policeman: Michael Keep Bank Guard: Joe Higgins Mr. Cooper: John Newton

Cameo of a man who has just lost his most valuable possession. He doesnt know about the loss yet. In fact, he doesnt even know about the possession. Because, like most people, David Gurney has never really thought about the matter of his identity. But hes going to be thinking about it a great deal from now on, because that is what hes lost. And his search for it is going to take him into the darkest comers of the Twilight Zone.

David Gurney wakes up to find that no one not his wife, his fellow workers, his best friend, or even his own mother knows him, and that all evidence of his identity has inexplicably disappeared. Hes committed to an asylum but manages to escape and find a photograph of himself and his wife, proving that she must know him. But when the police arrive with a psychiatrist, the picture has changed and shows Gurney alone. He throws himself on the ground and wakes up in bed. It was all a bad dream. His wife gets out of bed and talks to him from the bathroom as she removes cream from her face. But when she emerges, Gurney is horrified to see that, although she talks and acts the same as always, she doesnt look anything at all like the wife he knows!

((A case of mistaken identity or a nightmare turned inside out? A simple loss of memory or the end of the world? David Gurney may never find the answer, but you can be sure hes looking for itin the Twilight Zone.

In Charles Beaumonts Person or Persons Unknown, once again we have Serlings fear of the unknown working on you, which you cannot share with others. This, more than any other kind of story, is what The Twilight Zone is all about.

If there is any weakness to Person or Persons Unknown, it lies in its close similarity to Mathesons A World of Difference, leaving one with the feeling that it had already been done before. However, this is more than made up for by any number of factors. Richard Longs acting is very good. He takes just long enough to realize that what is happening to him is no joke, and he acts in a perfectly natural manner. Everyone else in the cast acts just as you think they would, trying to see to it that Gurneys delusion disrupts their lives as little as possible. The direction by John Brahm is fine and unobtrusive. Finally, there is the shows subtle reaffirmation of a fact we all know very well that you can act a hell of a lot crazier with people you know than with those you dont.

LITTLE GIRL LOST (3/16/62)

Written by Richard Matheson

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: Paul Stewart

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

Music: Bernard Herrmann

Cast: Bill: Charles Aidman Chris Miller: Robert Sampson Ruth Miller: Sarah Marshall Tina: Tracy Stratford Tinas Voice: Rhoda Williams

Missing: one frightened little girl. Name: Bettina Miller. Description: six years of age, average height and build, light brown hair, quite pretty. Last seen being tucked in bed by her mother a few hours ago. Last heardaye, theres the rub, as Hamlet put it. For Bettina Miller can be heard quite clearly, despite the rather curious fact that she cant be seen at all. Present location? Lets say for the moment in the Twilight Zone.

When his daughter Tina rolls underneath her bed and disappears, Chris Miller summons the aid of his friend Bill, a physicist after which the family dog bolts under the bed and disappears, too. Bill suspects Tina has fallen through a hole into another dimension, a theory borne out when he puts his hand through a seemingly-solid wall. Chris reaches his arm through in an attempt to grab Tina and inadvertently pitches forward, halfway through the hole and finds himself in a world of bizarre, distorted sights and sounds. He calls the dog, who brings Tina to him. Chris grabs hold of both Tina and the dog, and Bill pulls the three of them out. None too so on the hole has closed; the wall is entirely solid. Another few seconds, Bill tells Chris, and half of you would have been here and the other half …

The other half where? The fourth dimension? The fifth? Perhaps. They never found the answer. Despite a battery of research physicists equipped with every device known to man, electronic and otherwise, no result was ever achieved, except perhaps a little more respect for and uncertainty about the mechanisms of the Twilight Zone.

Richard Mathesons final episode of the third season was Little Girl Lost, a gripping science-fiction story about a little girl who falls through a hole between dimensions.

That was based on an occurrence that happened to our daughter, says Matheson. She didnt go into the fourth dimension, but she cried one night and I went to where she was and couldnt find her anywhere. I couldnt find her on the bed, I couldnt find her on the ground. She had fallen off and rolled all the way under the bed against the wall. At first, even when I felt under the bed, I couldnt reach her. It was bizarre, and thats where I got the idea.

Matheson wrote the original short story, which appears in his collection The Shores of Space (Bantam, 1957), in 1953. He tried to keep the feeling of it as real as possible, to the point that the wife is named Ruth and the daughter Tinathe names of his real-life wife and daughter. In adapting the story into a teleplay he strove to maintain this feeling of mundane reality gone askew.

Several things work against the credibility of the episode, however. For those scenes of her in the fourth dimension, the voice of Tina was supplied by adult actress Rhoda Williams, and it sounds like an adult impersonating a child. As the mother, Sarah Marshall is almost continuously hysterical, dishevelled and off-balance. Rather than contributing in a positive manner, she merely irritates with her emotionalism and incompetence. As for the father, played by Robert Sampson, hes all right in a bland way, except for the curious fact that before he checks to see if his daughter has somehow fallen under the house, he calls his friend Bill because hes a physicist and might know if shes in another dimension.

Two factors override all of these negatives. The first is Mathesons first-rate script, and the second is the bravura performance of Charles Aidman as the physicist friend of the little girls father. In And When the Sky Was Opened, Aidman made a fantastic conceptdisappearing off the face of the Earthseem altogether real. Here he accomplishes the same feat. In a role that affords no character whatsoever, that consists almost entirely of an extremely long and theoretical monologue on the nature of other dimensions, Aidman conveys intelligence and supreme competence. He is a rock, an anchor that holds the episode securely in place.

Creating the look and sound of the fourth dimension was an enjoyable challenge to those connected with the show. Bernard Herrmanns score, full of woodwinds and strings, is beautiful and strange. So too are several shots in which Charles Aidmans hand goes through a wall, into the other dimension. Amazingly, these shots were not double exposures. Director of photography George Clemens arranged that the wall be built with the center section parallel to but a foot behind the rest of the wall. The wall was then flooded with light to a degree that the separation was invisible. The camera was positioned at an angle to the wall. When Aidman placed his hand in the space between the sections of wall, his hand appeared to go through the wall and disappear. Says Clemens, You look through the camera, youd swear it was all one solid wall. Clemens recalls that a scene was filmed showing the little girl going through the wall into the other dimension, but it was not included in the finished episode.

Finally, there was the fourth dimension itself, a bizarre place of total distortion. We did a lot of it with putting oil on glass and moving it in front of the camera, says Clemens, and secondly, where we were unable to achieve all the results we wanted, we put it in the optical printer. Additionally, Clemens double exposed reflections from a mirrored ball onto these scenes.

It was pretty nice, Richard Matheson says of the episode. Aidman is a marvelous actor, and Paul Stewart directed it well. It had a nice feeling to it. The fourth dimension could have been a little stranger, but it wasnt bad at all; I was very pleased with it.

The Dummy

Written by Rod Serling

Producer: Buck Houghton

Director: Abner Biberman

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

Music: stock

Cast: Jerry Etherson: Cliff Robertson Frank: Frank Sutton Willy (as ventriloquist):George Murdock Georgie: John Harmon Noreen: Sandra Warner M.C.: Rudy Dolan Doorkeeper: Ralph Manza Chorus Girl: Bethelynn Grey Chorus Girl: Edy Williams

Youre watching a ventriloquist named Jerry Etherson, a voice-thrower par excellence. His alter ego, sitting atop his lap, is a brash stick of kindling with the sobriquet (Willy. In a moment, Mr. Etherson and his knotty-pine partner will be booked in one of the out-of-the-way bistros, that small, dark, intimate place known as the Twilight Zone.

Jerry, who drinks more than is good for him, is convinced that Willie is aliveand malevolent. Frank, Jerrys manager, believes Jerrys problem is entirely in his mind, but Jerry refuses to listen to him. Instead, he determines to attempt to escape from Willie. When his act with Goofy Gogglesa dummy without a will of his ownis well-received, Jerry locks Willie in a trunk and departs the club with Goofy, intending to abandon Willie. But suddenly, Jerry hears Willies voice, taunting him, and sees Willies shadow on a wall. In a frenzy, he rushes back to the club, unlocks the trunk and smashes the dummy to pieces. To his horror, he sees it is Goofy he has destroyed. Willie laughs maniacally. Sometime later, Willie and Jerry play a club in Kansas City, but Willie has transformed into the ventriloquist Jerry is the dummy!

Whats known in the parlance of the times as the old switcher oo, from boss to blockhead in a few easy lessons. And if youre given to nightclubbing on occasion, check this act. Its called Willie and Jerry, and they generally are booked into some of the clubs along the Gray Night Way known as the Twilight Zone

In adapting The Dummy from a story by Lee Polk, Serling was greatly influenced by a sequence in the 1945 British film Dead of Night, in which Michael Redgrave plays a demented ventriloquist who believes his dummy is alive, and by The Glass Eye, an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents concerning a woman who falls in love with a handsome ventriloquist only to discover that it is he who is the dummy and the dummy a dwarf ventriloquist. But Serling went these one better.

The Dummy was the first of four Twilight Zone episodes directed by Abner Biberman (the others were The Incredible World of Horace Ford, Number Twelve Looks Just Like You, and I Am the Night Color Me Black). Previously, he had been an actor, appearing in such films as Gunga Din, His Girl Friday, The Leopard Man, and Viva Zapata. With The Dummy, he demonstrated fine control as a director.