( spoilers-ish ) These last 2 nites , I saw , on SyFy , their marathon of the original B&W THE TWILIGHT ZONE series .
Something like 40 hours taken up , so 80 episodes , 1/2 of the half-hour episodes ? ( Towards the end of the series it went to a full hour , these eps. seem to have something of a New Blackhawk Era/Scrappy-Doo reputation . )
Frankly , perhelps helped by the fact that I was tending to watch late at nite , the episodes shown seemed not to be the famous/widely sung ones , so to speak . I assume that , in a syndication/re-run package , you get the rights to ru EVERY episode , say , five times during your contractual term , so the leser-known ones...Since the back-to-back episodes had a variety of title sequences , I presume they wwere all from different places in the show's run .
I was struck , seeing a lot of the show again for a first time in a long time , how the casting costs were kept down , with , if not literal two-actor episodes , awfully close to it , pretty common .
It does have to be said , the " secret "/mystery the story was leading up to was pretty easily apparent early on a lot of the time .
The very last episode , befoer the marathon stopped and the infomercials resumed , this morning , was an episode that looked like it may have been transmitted live originally it rather looked like a kinescope !!!!!!! Rod Serling , in 1960 , showing his " live-TV " muscles were still operative ?
It revolved around a dancer/stripper , in a hospital , having recurrent nightmares where she went down to the hospital's morgue and a tall nurse , like no nurse who worked in the hospital , greets her at the door saying " Come in . There's always room for one more . " Guess , I say , GUESS how this ended !!!!!!!
One episode I remembered from childhood was one where William Shatner and his wife are stranded in a small town and become fascinated by apenny fortune-telling machine in a diner .
I remember at least two Richard Matheson-penned eps that aroused some - Were hey a litle similar ? - thought in me , but I can't quite remember them now .
I remember once reading in a history of the series that , at about the 2nd or 3d season in the show's life , the budget was cut alittle by having a few episodes being shot on videotape , not film , and the adaptation of " An Occurence At Owl Creek Bridge " episode , which was a completely independent French-made short film that was made independently of the series , being brought in , which steps saved money sufficiently that the show was able to stay within budget sufficiently to be renewed for another season , but Serling groused about this happening .
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Yes, the videotape thing is true, and the French film. I'd never heard that Serling was bothered by either. I watched lots of the marathon too, as I do every year. Before SyFy bought the rights I used to see episodes every night on local TV, so I know the series very well. The one-hour episodes are from the second to last season, an experiment that mostly didn't work, although I like some of them. Because they're twice the length of the average episode they've been broadcast far less frequently than the half hour episodes. So I like to try to catch them during the marathon, just because they're less familiar. I'd like to see "Owl Creek" again. I swear I remember seeing it once, but it couldn't have been in later syndication. Maybe it was part of the package until someone realized that they didn't have rebroadcast rights.
I think the series is the best thing ever created for TV. The writing, the acting, the camera work...they're like little movies. Even the weaker episodes are better than most TV then or since. The only thing that seems really dated now are the paranoid nuclear war & "Red scare" episodes. But there are Burgess Meredith episodes in both categories that are some of the best: "Time Enough At Last" (the one where he plays a bookworm who is the sole survivor of a nuclear war) & "The Obsolete Man" (the one where he plays an "obsolete" librarian, only marred for me by the religious content).
...Okay , thank you .
If the stripper/" Room for..." episode was a live broadcast preserved on a " kine " ( Correct?? spelling of the vernacular ? My late father worked in TV news (not entertainment) about that period , and in remembering then used that phrase...BTW , I believe " telerecording " ( see early DOCTOR WHO ) was the Brit English term for the same thing . ) , I believe kinescopes were 16MM films , not VTs , so that might be something else still...Am hurried , lad to see someone resonding & knowledgeable ,must go , later !!!!!!!!!
Some episodes were shot on videotape to save money like Art Carney in "Night of the Meek" but it was too limited a format for a show going through the "Door of Imagination."
As for great episodes, Shadowplay, Eye of the Beholder, Jess-Belle, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, Two, The Invader, The Hitchhiker, One for the Angels, A Game of Pool, there are just too many to list. Suffice to say more great ones than not-so-great ones!
...How about the comics and otherwise " genre " incarnations of TTZ ?????
There have been at least two fair-run comic-book series using the name , a long-running one from Gold Key ( Dellearlier ????? ) and then again from comics shop-era Now Comics.........
Emerkeith Davyjack said:
"One episode I remembered from childhood was one where William Shatner and his wife are stranded in a small town and become fascinated by a penny fortune-telling machine in a diner ."
"Nick of Time" was the title of that episode. Richard Matheson wrote it. It's one of my favorites.
Speaking of Richard Matheson - if you are looking for some Twilight Zone like reading, Matheson's short story collection "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is terrific. In fact any Matheson short story collection is worth reading. You may be surprised at how many of his stories were adapted to TZ as well as other shows and films.
...Okay , I was thinking of posting this in the " Monsters...ME-TV " line , since I saw it there this nite but since I described the " Room for one more ! " ep. (which is titled " No. 22 " or like that) at length here already...........
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