Created By Rod Serling
Starring Burgess Meredith, Gig Young, Vera Miles, Rod Taylor, Anne Francis, Roddy McDowell and Jack Klugman
The Twilight Zone should need no introduction. From the show’s ironic final stingers which have made the show an instant point of comparison for any film or TV show to attempt a twist ending since, to that simple, but memorably eerie theme tune, so often jokingly whistled by friends to punctuate a moment of real-life weirdness, Rod Serling’s iconic TV show has been permanently etched into the pop culture consciousness. In the unlikely event that you haven’t seen an episode, chances are you’re at least aware of it or have seen something that’s been inspired by it.
Hosted by Serling himself and telling a new standalone science-fiction/fantasy tale each week, The Twilight Zone told stories of ordinary people caught up in mysterious, otherworldly circumstances, and like most great sci-fi, smuggled timely social commentary in amongst its pulpy short stories, usually capped off with a surprising and cruelly ironic twist ending. The Twilight Zone wasn’t the first anthology show to make a splash on the airwaves, having been preceded by series like Science Fiction Theatre and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but it was undoubtedly the most influential. Even modern TV’s most universally popular show has its toe dipped deeply in The Twilight Zone – without Rod Serling’s series, The Simpsons would have no ‘Treehouse of Horror’ Halloween anthology episodes, which often remake and parody Twilight Zone stories.
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The show has been revived a couple of times over the years with mixed results, but the anthology series format has rarely proven successful since. HBO’s Tales From The Crypt found success largely by distancing itself from The Twilight Zone and embracing EC Comics’ darkly comic, gruesomely macabre tales of grim, violent karmic comeuppance, while Are You Afraid of the Dark gained a seven-season total run primarily by ensnaring younger viewers. But the landscape of TV history is littered with the corpses of shows that tried to revive Serling’s blueprint and wound up short-lived and quickly forgotten, partially due to the uneven nature of having a revolving door of writers without the Zone’s more unified tone and creative vision (Serling penned a whopping 28 of the first season’s 36 episodes) but perhaps in part to the imposing, inescapable shadow that The Twilight Zone casts.
While even Serling himself would later struggle to maintain the staggering pace and quality of his creative output in the face of studio interference and the shift to a bloated hour-long format, the early seasons of The Twilight Zone showcase consistently masterful storytelling filled with boundless imagination that few TV writers can ever hope to rival. The first season includes some of the series’ most famous and memorable episodes like ‘Time Enough At Last’, in which a short-sighted bookworm finds himself the last man alive, and ‘The Monsters are Due on Maple Street’, which toys with McCarthy-era paranoia as a handful of neighbours quickly turn on each other when they suspect their town to be in the grip of an alien invasion.
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There are tonnes of great stories surrounding the more well-known ones, too: The poignantly wistful ‘Walking Distance’ – a meditation on the fleeting nature of youth that sees a burnt-out ad exec suddenly wander into the past when he visits his home town; the playfully postmodern ‘A World Of His Own’ finds a playwright with the ability to bring his characters to life, while the atmospheric, slightly Hitchcockian thriller ‘Nightmare as a Child’ follows a young woman with a traumatic history visited by a mysterious little girl and a strange man from her past. It’s a show filled with often creepy and always grippingly strange and twisty tales, each filled with tight, economical and perfectly executed character-driven storytelling.
If you’ve never seen The Twilight Zone before, you’re in for a wonderful treat – it’s some of the most mesmerising entertainment in TV history. If you’ve caught the show on TV during marathon showings, then chances are you still might not have seen every episode, and there’s still a wealth of amazing and memorable gems to be found. And if you’re a Twilight Zone fan who’s seen every episode countless times already, then you’ll no doubt have another purchase to add to your wish list once you see the phenomenal treatment the series has received for its Blu-ray release.
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Do you already own The Twilight Zone on DVD? Feel free to frisbee those discs down the street and get your credit card handy – those DVDs are now obsolete coasters in the face of Shock Entertainment’s stunning Blu-ray set. Starting with a high-definition remaster from the original 35mm negatives, The Twilight Zone’s 1080p Blu-ray treatment is a night-and-day upgrade from past DVD sets. Natural grain and noise, occasional specks and minor marks on the print are apparent, as is to be expected for a show this old, but otherwise the transfer is astonishing. The detail apparent, especially in close-up shots where you can practically count the strands of stubble on a man’s face, is absolutely astounding, and this is the best The Twilight Zone has ever looked by a wide margin.
The audio has received a similar, if slightly less revelatory polish and tune-up. Each episode features a newly-restored uncompressed PCM mono track, which sounds as perfect as you could hope with incredibly clarity of dialogue and the show’s score. As a point of comparison and to please completists, the original unrestored mono tracks are also included. English SDH subtitles are also featured for those who need them.
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While the gorgeous visual treatment the show has received in HD is impressive enough, the utterly stunning wealth of special features instantly rob the previous ‘Definitive Collection’ DVDs of their title. You could spend weeks poring over the mountain of content included, but of most interest to fans (and exclusive to the Blu-ray set) will likely be the fully HD restored Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse episode ‘The Time Element’ (which served as the original ‘unofficial pilot’ for The Twilight Zone), the whopping 18 radio dramas which reworked classic episodes for modern radio, and the 19 new enlightening, engaging commentaries with folks like The Twilight Zone Companion author Marc Scott Zicree, historian Gary Gerani, music historians Steven C. Smith, John Morgan and William T. Stromberg, writer/producer David Simkins (Dark Angel, Lois & Clark), Children of Men and Iron Man screenwriter Mark Fergus, actor William Reynolds and director Ted Post.
Also a noteworthy new addition is the Tales of Tomorrow episode ‘What You Need’, included (in standard definition) as a companion piece for The Twilight Zone episode of the same name which adapts the same Lewis Padgett short story. The mammoth full list of special features is as follows:
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Disc 1
Episode 1 – ‘Where is Everybody?’
Episode 2 – ‘One for the Angels’
Episode 3 – ‘Mr. Denton on Doomsday’
Episode 4 – ‘The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine’
Episode 5 – ‘Walking Distance’
Episode 6 – ‘Escape Clause’
Episode 7 – ‘The Lonely’
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Disc 2
Episode 8 – ‘Time Enough at Last’
Episode 9 – ‘Perchance to Dream’
Episode 11 – ‘And When the Sky Was Opened’
Episode 12 – ‘What You Need’
Episode 13 – ‘The Four of Us are Dying’
Episode 14 – ‘Third from the Sun’
Episode 15 – ‘I Shot an Arrow Into the Air’
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Disc 3
Episode 16 – ‘The Hitch-Hiker’
Episode 17 – ‘The Fever’
Episode 18 – ‘The Last Flight’
Episode 19 – ‘The Purple Testament’
Episode 20 – ‘Elegy’
Episode 21 – ‘Mirror Image’
Episode 22 – ‘The Monsters are Due on Maple Street’
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Disc 4
Episode 23 – ‘A World of Difference’
Episode 24: “Long Live Walter Jameson”
Episode 25 – ‘People Are Alike All Over’
Episode 26 – ‘Execution’
Episode 27 – ‘The Big Tall Wish’
Episode 28 – ‘A Nice Place To Visit’
Episode 29 – ‘Nightmare as a Child’
Episode 30: “A Stop at Willoughby”
Disc 5:
Episode 31 – ‘The Chaser’
Episode 32 – ‘A Passage For Trumpet’
Episode 33 – ‘Mr. Bevis’
Episode 34 – ‘The After Hours’
Episode 35 – ‘The Mighty Casey’
Episode 36 – ‘A World of His Own’
Additional Extras:
Whether you’re a casual or die-hard fan of the show, this Blu-ray set is the way to see it. With an absolutely stunning high-definition transfer and a mind-boggling array of quality special features, Shock Entertainment have heaped unconditional love on a show that truly deserves it, giving fans the best set they could ask for. Buy it right the hell now.
The Film:
The Blu-ray:
The Twilight Zone: The Original Series – Season One is out on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK now.
Click here to order the Blu-ray from Amazon.co.uk.
(Note: The images above were captured and saved at a reduced quality, and though they give an idea of how the film looks, they aren’t intended to reflect the true quality of the Blu-ray image itself.)