Z-View Twilight Zone: “Back There” [Season 2, Episode 13]

Posted on by

Twilight Zone: “Back There” [Season 2, Episode 13]
Original Air Date: January 13, 1961

Director: David Orrick McDearmon

Writer: Rod Serling

Starring: Russell Johnson and Paul Hartman.

The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…

Pete Corrigan [Russell Johnson of Gilligan’s Island fame] spends the evening debating the possibility of time travel to the past to change events.  When he walks outside that evening Corrigan finds himself transported back in time to the evening that President Lincoln was assassinated.  With little time to spare, can Corrigan change history?

Rating:

Z-View Twilight Zone: “Dust” [Season 2, Episode 12]

Posted on by

Twilight Zone: “Dust” [Season 2, Episode 12]
Original Air Date: January 6, 1961

Director: Douglas Heyes

Writer: Rod Serling

Starring: Thomas Gomez, John Larch and Vladimir Sokoloff.

The Overview: Beware of Spoilers

Gallegos’ son is scheduled to be hanged for the accidental death of child. Gallegos begs the Marshall for mercy, but unless the dead child’s parents give consent to stop, the hanging must go on.

An unscrupulous traveling salesman offers to sell Gallegos magic dust which has the power to grant his wish.

Rating:

Z-View Twilight Zone: “The Night of the Meek” [Season 2, Episode 11]

Posted on by

Twilight Zone: “The Night of the Meek” [Season 2, Episode 11]
Original Air Date: December 23, 1960

Director: Jack Smight

Writer: Rod Serling

Starring: Art Carney and John Fiedler.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Henry Corwin [Carney] is an alcoholic who gets seasonal work playing Santa at a department store.  When Corwin shows up late to work and under the influence he is fired.  Corwin thinks about all of the children he has let down and how he wishes he were the real Santa and could give out presents to all.  Sometimes wishes do come true…

Rating:

10 Mind-Blowing Facts About “Scanners”

Posted on by

Tara Aquino and Mental_Floss present 10 Mind-Blowing Facts About Scanners.  Here are three of my favorites…

4. CRONENBERG SHOT TWO ENDINGS TO SCANNERS.
According to Michael Ironside, who played Darryl Revok, he and Stephen Lack filmed a less exciting version of the ending. “With one ending, we had this psycho-battle between my brother and I and it didn’t work, we shot it right up until Christmas and sent the script to [special effects wizard] Dick Smith in New York and asked him what he could come up with in terms of cutting edge makeup,” Ironside explained. “You know, something that would give us a more memorable battle and a different ending. Dick then came up with the idea of the exploding heads and that was a very collaborative thing.”

5. ACCORDING TO LACK, THE SCANNERS SCRIPT WASN’T EVEN WRITTEN WHILE FILMING.
It’s no surprise that Cronenberg allegedly called Scanners his most frustrating film to make. In addition to delays in filming, the script wasn’t even completed when production commenced. “Not only was Scanners not rehearsed, but it wasn’t written,” Lack told Film Comment. “David was coming in with pink, blue, and yellow pages for the day for the version of the script that we were doing, and he was working on it right there. As a result I had to deal with the dialogue in such a way that I was not reacting to things, because the information hadn’t been given to my character in the linear progression of the story. If you chop it up and look at it, 50 percent of my dialogue is not an assertion of anything but rather a question: ‘You called me a Scanner, what does that mean?’ ‘You’re part of an organization, who are you?’ Everything is a freaking question!”

6. MICHAEL IRONSIDE WORE DUSTIN HOFFMAN’S EYES FROM LITTLE BIG MAN IN A CRUCIAL SCENE.
Scanners was all about making its special effects work at all costs, which is why Ironside’s story about his peculiar eyes at the end of the film fits in perfectly. “There’s a scene … where I’m set on fire and my head comes up and those scleras they put on your eyes, they had scratched all my corneas,” Ironside recalled. “So the contact lenses they had made for me to change my eye color didn’t fit properly because my eyes had been scratched. Dick Smith happened to have with him Dustin Hoffman’s eyes from Little Big Man and they were actually oversized, and you wouldn’t normally do this because they have to be fitted, but when you see me come out from under that coat at the end of Scanners, those blue eyes of mine are Dustin Hoffman’s from Little Big Man.”

Z-View Twilight Zone: “A Most Unusual Camera” [Season 2, Episode 10]

Posted on by

Twilight Zone: “A Most Unusual Camera” [Season 2, Episode 10]
Original Air Date: December 16, 1960

Director: John Rich

Writer: Rod Serling

Starring: Fred Clark, Jean Carson and Adam Williams.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

When a husband and wife team who are small time hustlers get their hands on a camera that takes photos that are five minutes in the future, they head to the race track to get rich. All is good until the brother-in-law shows up.

Rating:

10 Facts About “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”

Posted on by

Mark Mancini and Mental_Floss present 10 Facts About Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. IT’S BASED ON A MAGAZINE SERIAL.
In November and December of 1954, Collier’s magazine ran a three-part series that would come to be called “the year’s most original story of suspense.” Written by Jack Finney, The Body Snatchers wowed producer Walter Wanger, who began negotiating the story’s movie rights before he’d even read part two.

5. ORIGINALLY, THE MOVIE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A LOT FUNNIER.
“I felt that pods growing into a likeness of a person would strike the characters as preposterous,” Siegel recalled. “I wanted to play it that way, with the characters not taking the threat seriously.” Hoping to offset the scares, he filmed a number of comedic scenes, which were later cut out by Allied Artists, the film’s distributor. “In their hallowed words, ‘horror films are horror films and there’s no room for humor,’” Siegel explained. “I translated [this] to mean that in their pod brains there was no room for humor.”

8. THE PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE WERE LAST-MINUTE ADDITIONS.
Allied Artists didn’t just cut a few jokes here and there; the studio also insisted on a completely different ending. Originally, the movie was going to close with a shot of Dr. Bennell watching hopelessly as truckloads of pods drive out into the distance. Wanting to end the film on a more hopeful note, Allied Artists came up with a slightly happier conclusion. Over his strong objections, Siegel was told to film a new intro and a new final scene (“I reluctantly consented,” he said.) The revamped opening puts Bennell in a police station, where he tells the story as anextended flashback. After the famous “You’re next!” sequence, his tale ends and, after a while, the authorities begin to believe him.

Z-View Twilight Zone: “The Trouble with Templeton” [Season 2, Episode 9]

Posted on by

Twilight Zone: “The Trouble with Templeton” [Season 2, Episode 9]
Original Air Date: December 9, 1960

Director: Buzz Kulik

Writer: Rod Serling

Starring: Brian Aherne, Pippa Scott and Sydney Pollack.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Booth Templeton [Aherne] is an aging actor nostalgic for the good old days when he was the toast of the town and his wife was still alive.  Sadly, when Templeton gets a chance to visit the past he finds things are not as he remembered them.

Rating:

Z-View Twilight Zone: “The Lateness of the Hour” [Season 2, Episode 8]

Posted on by

Twilight Zone: “The Lateness of the Hour” [Season 2, Episode 8]
Original Air Date: December 2, 1960

Director: Jack Smight

Writer: Rod Serling

Starring: Inger Stevens and John Hoyt.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Jana Loren [Stevens] has grown up surrounded by servants.  Her father is an inventor and the servants are robots designed to meet all of the family’s needs.  Jana desires more freedom and wants her parents to get rid of the robots… which of course is a path she shouldn’t go down since she is in The Twilight Zone.
Rating: