Previews and Reviews that are Z's Views
Twilight Zone: “The Dummy” [Season 3, Episode 33]
Original Air Date: May 4, 1962
Director: Abner Biberman
Writer: Rod Serling based on a story by Lee Polk
Starring: Cliff Robertson, Frank Sutton and George Murdock.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Jerry Etherson is a very good ventriloquist. The only thing holding him back from the big time is his dummy… who is very evil and very alive.
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Twilight Zone: “The Gift” [Season 3, Episode 32]
Original Air Date: April 27, 1962
Director: Allen H. Minor
Writer: Rod Serling
Starring: Geoffrey Horne, Nico Minardos and Cliff Osmond.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Word reaches a small Mexican village that a space craft crashed nearby and the alien encounter with the police left one of the officers dead and the alien wounded. Shortly after a stranger shows up in town.
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Twilight Zone: “The Trade-Ins” [Season 3, Episode 31]
Original Air Date: April 20, 1962
Director: Elliot Silverstein
Writer: Rod Serling
Starring: Joseph Schildkraut, Noah Keen and Alma Platt.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
John and Marie Holt have had a long and loving marriage. The take their life savings to the New Life Corporation with the idea of having their consciousness transplanted into new, young and healthy bodies. Sadly, they only have enough for one of them to get the transformation.
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Twilight Zone: “Hocus-Pokus and Fisby” [Season 3, Episode 30]
Original Air Date: April 13, 1962
Director: Lamont Johnson
Writer: Rod Serling based on a short story by Frederick Louis Fox
Starring: Andy Devine, Milton Selzer and Howard McNear.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Somerset Fisby [Devine] is known to tell tale tales about everything. To hear Fisby tell it he has several advanced degrees and the greatest minds in the world seek his advice.
Everyone knows to take what Fisby says with a grain of salt except for the two strangers passing through town… they turn out to be aliens in disguise and believe Fisby would be the perfect example of a human to take to their planet.
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Twilight Zone: “Four O’Clock” [Season 3, Episode 29]
Original Air Date: April 6, 1962
Director: Lamont Johnson
Writer: Rod Serling based on a short story by Price Day
Starring: Theodore Bikel, Phyllis Love and Linden Chiles.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Oliver Crangle [Bikel] has made it his life’s work to ruin the lives of those he sees as communists, perverts, and undesirables. Crangle contacts an FBI agent to say that he’s arranged that a four o’clock the evil people will transform.
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Twilight Zone: “The Little People” [Season 3, Episode 28]
Original Air Date: March 30, 1962
Director: William Claxton
Writer: Rod Serling
Starring: Joe Maross, Claude Akins and Michael Ford.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Three astronauts make an emergency landing on an unknown planet and discover a society of beings the size of ants. When the ship is repaired one of the astronauts elects to stay behind since the society view him as a god.
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Alvin Ward and Mental_Floss present 116 Amazing Facts for People Who Like Amazing Facts. Here are three of my favorites…
50. Roger Ebert and Oprah Winfrey went on a couple dates in the mid-1980s. It was Roger who convinced her to syndicate her talk show.
62. Dolly Parton once entered a Dolly Parton look-a-like contest—and lost.
74. Herbert Hoover was Stanford’s football team manager. At the first Stanford-Cal game in 1892, he forgot to bring the ball.
Twilight Zone: “Person or Persons Unknown” [Season 3, Episode 27]
Original Air Date: March 23, 1962
Director: John Brahm
Writer: Charles Beaumont
Starring: Richard Long, Frank Silvera and Shirley Ballard.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
After a night of drinking, David Gurney wakes up late for work and immediately starts getting ready. When he can’t find his razor he goes out to wake his wife and ask if she moved it. When his wife awakes she begins screaming at him as if he is a stranger. Gurney soon discovers that no one recognizes him…
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Twilight Zone: “Little Girl Lost” [Season 3, Episode 26]
Original Air Date: March 16, 1962
Director: Paul Stewart
Writer: Richard Matheson
Starring: Sarah Marshall, Robert Sampson and Charles Aidman .
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Chris and Ruth Miller are awakened in the middle of the night by their little girl’s cries. When they check her bed and her room she is nowhere to be found… and her cries seem to be coming from inside the wall.
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Twilight Zone: “The Fugitive” [Season 3, Episode 25]
Original Air Date: March 9, 1962
Director: Richard L. Bare
Writer: Charles Beaumont
Starring: Susan Gordon, J. Pat O’Malley and Nancy Kulp.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Jenny is a young girl whose best friend is Old Ben. Although elderly, Ben is young at heart, plays with Jenny and the kids and is always fun and kind.
Things change when two men show up claiming that Ben is an escaped fugitive from another planet and they are there to bring him back.
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Twilight Zone: “To Serve Man” [Season 3, Episode 24]
Original Air Date: March 2, 1962
Director: Richard L. Bare
Writer: Rod Serling based on a story by Damon Knight
Starring: Lloyd Bochner, Susan Cummings and Richard Kiel.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Aliens come to earth promising peace and shared technology. They seem to be making good on their promise to turn earth into a paradise, yet some doubts linger…
This is one of the best Twilight Zone episodes made.
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Twilight Zone: “The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank” [Season 3, Episode 23]
Original Air Date: February 23, 1962
Director: Montgomery Pittman
Writer: Montgomery Pittman
Starring: James Best, Sherry Jackson, Edgar Buchanan and Dub Taylor.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
When Jeff Myrtlebank rises from his coffin the town folk are at first frightened but fear turns to joy at having Jeff back… that is until they notice that he is not quite the same…
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I enjoyed the first season of Wayward Pines and will definitely tune in for the second. The idea of a 10 season arc that tells a complete story really appeals to me. Hopefully the second season will live up to the first.
Bryan Reesman and Mental Floss present 15 Out-of-This-World Facts About Forbidden Planet. Here are three of my favorites…
7. ROBBY RACKED UP A LOT OF OTHER CREDITS.
Forbidden Planet made its lovable bucket of bolts a star, and throughout his career Robby racked up more than two dozen film and TV credits, including The Invisible Boy, The Thin Man(TV series), Lost In Space, The Twilight Zone, Wonder Woman, Morkand Mindy, and Gremlins.He has also done TV spots for Charmin, AT&T, and General Electric (that last one in 2012).
15. THE FILMMAKERS WERE RECYCLERS.
Forbidden Planet was shot on same stage as The Wizard of Oz, with bits of Munchkinland used for Altaira’s garden. In an interesting twist, some of Forbidden Planet‘s costumes (including the crewmen uniforms and Altaira’s clothing) were re-used in Queen of Outer Space, a 1958 sci-fi movie starring Zsa Zsa Gabor in which a space crew that has crash landed on Venus attempts to overthrow its female dictator, who has banished men from the planet.
5. ROBERT KINOSHITA DESIGNED ANOTHER ICONIC ROBOT.
That electronic entity being, of course, The Robot from the ’60s sci-fi series Lost In Space. While their design was somewhat different, the two cybernetic companions shared a similar “talk box,” a display that lit up in tandem with the rhythm of their speech. Robby actually guest starred on three episodes of Lost In Space.
Twilight Zone: “A Piano in the House” [Season 3, Episode 22]
Original Air Date: February 16, 1962
Director: David Greene
Writer: Earl Hamner, Jr.
Starring: Barry Morse, Joan Hackett and Don Durant.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Fitzgerald Fortune [Morse] buys an old player piano that has the power to make people reveal their inner-most secrets. Fortune arranges a party to take advantage of his guests, but as often happens in the Twilight Zone, things don’t go as planned.
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