Justin does Twilight Zone: The Movie

“You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone. “

The Scoop: 1983 PG, directed by Joe Dante, John Landis, George Miller and Steven Spielberg

Tagline: You’re travelling through another dimension. A dimension, not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Zone!

Summary Capsule: Four mini-movies attempt to recapture the classic touch of Rod Serling’s series. Doesn’t work so much.

Justin’s Rating: Something out of four would actually be an appropriate rating here

Justin’s Review: I wasn’t ever the biggest Twilight Zone fan when growing up, although I did have the distinct impression that this was the sort of show that could make me stay up at nights in fear of my closet swallowing me or something. Gradually, I came to an appreciation of the old Rod Serling classic series (forget the subsequent series), especially how thoughtful and inventive some of them were. The stark black-and-white look of the show coupled with its unfettered access to the weird possibilities of the imagination made for episodes that would stick in your head for years afterwards.

However, there’s always the association that Twilight Zone = Horror, which is a tad unfair to the format. Sure, sometimes it is scary, but many times just surreal, supernatural or eerie. I never got around to checking out Twilight Zone: The Movie as a teen because I assumed it would’ve scared my pants right off and then I’d become known as “Pantless Boy” for the rest of puberty. If I only knew that this was a pretty tame endeavor into spooky campfire tall tales, I wouldn’t have been so cautious.

Let’s recap: when Justin is scared of something as a kid, it takes him about 18 years to finally face that fear and discover it’s a big pussycat.

Like the series, Twilight Zone: The Movie is an anthology, split up into four stories with a prologue/epilogue framing it. Burgess Meredith fills in for deceased Rod Serling to do the ominous introductions to each tale, although Meredith (a Twilight Zone series vet) just doesn’t have the same punch as Serling. What’s perhaps more interesting than the stories themselves is that each segment is helmed by a different director (with some pretty big names here: Joe Dante, Steven Spielberg, John Landis and George Miller), and, of course, the fatal helicopter stunt that claimed the lives of three actors (see Intermission).

Since reviewing each of the stories separately was good enough for Roger Ebert back in the day, it’s more than good for me to plagiarize now:

Prologue: Seeing a young Albert Brooks and Dan Aykroyd was an experience in squinting closely at the TV and muttering, “Man, where are their wrinkle lines?” The prologue itself, styled like an urban legend with its slow, foreshadowy buildup, is nothing to write home about, even if you are at home. Once you get over this hump, you’re pretty much assured that nothing in this movie’s going to scare you if this is the best they could come up with.

Segment 1: An interesting tale of a bigot (Vic Morrow) who finally gets what’s coming to him, as he suddenly starts time-jumping to different eras (Nazi France, 50’s Deep South, 60’s Vietnam) and is slapped upside the head by irony as he becomes the one being hunted, tormented and attacked. I say this is an “interesting” tale, because it lacks the dark punch that it really needed to land to make it effective. I don’t know what it is, but only the last scene did anything for me – the rest seemed like set dressing.

Segment 2: Just when you think this movie’s on a path to the dark side, Steven Spielberg takes over for a fairly charming look at a retirement home where the old folks learn to reclaim their inner youth with the help of Scatman Crothers. I’m sure Cocoon was lurking somewhere just off set, muttering how it was going to do it better once it got the funding. I like it for the line, “The day we stop playing is the day we start getting old.” It’s fluffy but interesting to watch little kids portray senior citizens.

Segment 3: Probably one of the more famous Twilight Zone stories (which got a funny Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror sendup), this one retells “It’s A Good Life” as a little boy with impressive mental powers traps a schoolteacher in a house full of hostages posing as “family”. The set is particularly well-done, just off-kilter enough to be unnerving, and some of the effects jolt effectively (people with no mouths always are freaky-deaky). It has a bit of a hippie-let’s-hug ending to it, but it was probably the most entertaining out of all the stories here.

Segment 4: John Lithgow reprises William Shatner’s famous turn as a jittery airplane passenger convinced that there’s “Some… thing! On the wing!” There’s better special effects and some funny moments (creepy girl, you need to be stowed down below), but it’s more or less a pass, particularly if you saw the original episode. There’s a short epilogue that ties this story back to the prologue, but it got a big shoulder-shrug from me.

The odd thing about Twilight Zone: The Movie to me was that instead of creating all-new stories for it, they instead elected to just redo or crib from the series extensively (even the first segment, which is supposedly the “original” tale, was inspired by two episodes). I suppose there’s a little something here for everyone, but in 2008, it just comes off as a limp-wristed effort to recapture the punch-in-the-gut glory of much better days gone by.

I have no mouth and I must yodel

Didja Notice?

• Ah cassette tape players… how quaint

• Dan Akryod hums the theme to Dragnet; he appeared in the remake
• “Well, grandpa’s dumped off, let’s go live our lives!”
• Mention is made of Lieutenant Neidermeyer getting “fragged” by his own troops. This was the fate given to Neidermeyer in the ending of Animal House, also directed by John Landis.
• In the opening title sequence, Rod Serling can be seen in the reflection of the eye.

Intermission!

During the filming of a segment directed by John Landis on July 23, 1982, actor Vic Morrow and child actors Myca Dinh Le (age 7) and Renee Shin-Yi Chen (age 6) died in an accident involving a helicopter being used on the set. Pyrotechnic explosions caused the low-flying helicopter to spin out of control and crash. The rotor blade decapitated Morrow and Le; Chen was crushed by the helicopter’s skid. The helicopter’s passengers suffered only minor injuries.

The accident led to legal action against the filmmakers which lasted nearly a decade, and changed the regulations involving children working on movie sets at night and during special effects-heavy scenes. Hollywood also avoided helicopter-related stunts for many years, until the CGI revolution of the 1990s made it possible to use digital versions. As a result of the accident, one second assistant director had his name removed from the credits and replaced with the pseudonymous Alan Smithee. The incident also ended the friendship between director Landis and producer Spielberg.

Groovy Quotes

Car Passenger: Hey… you wanna see something really scary?

John Valentine: There’s a man on the wing of this plane!

Narrator: You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.

Mr. Bloom: The day we stop playing is the day we start getting old.

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Twilight Zone (series)

• Creepshow
• Creepshow 2