#arlenschumer

TONIGHT on ME-TV @ 11:35am EST, one of the GREAT episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE: “THE INVADERS” (Written by Richard Matheson, directed by Douglas Heyes, originally broadcast January 27, 1961) Agnes Moorehead’s dialogueless, mimetic performance as a farmwoman terrorized by “The Invaders,” small, mysterious aliens from a saucer-shaped spaceship that lands on the roof of her old house, is a tour de force; according to director Douglas Heyes, she had actually studied with the legendary mime Marcel Marceau years earlier. Without any dialogue, the excellent original score by famed composer Jerry Goldsmith takes center stage, carrying the narrative along, weaving in and out of the action, dropping out so we can hear the buzzing sounds of the aliens’ miniature ray guns, or Moorehead’s many grunts and groans, whimpers and moans, as she tirelessly battles the outer space intruders to the death. The lighting designs by Twilight Zone’s Director of Photography George T. Clemens also shine, as he utilizes the entire black and white palette—high contrasts, edge lighting, chiaroscuro—to bathe the episode in a sea of darkness. I keep referring to the tiny terrorizers as “aliens,” because that’s what Matheson expects us to believe they are—until, of course, we get to one of the great Twilight Zone perspective-shifting surprise endings, up on the roof where an axe-wielding Moorehead is delivering repeated blows to the spaceship, killing its alien occupants, but not before they make one last audible transmission back to their planet, warning them...in English? “...incredible race of giants here...too much for us...too powerful... no counter-attack...stay away...” The camera pans to a close-up of the spaceship’s decimated hull, labeled with the designation, “U.S. Air Force Space Probe No. 1.” The episode’s haunting, final image, of a (smashed) futuristic flying saucer perched atop an old farmhouse roof, is as surreal a juxtaposition of past and future as the penultimate scene in Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the spheric space pod sitting incongruently in the neoclassical living room. arlenschumer.com/twilight-zone #arlenschumer @dgareps https://www.instagram.com/p/CqqJp1ULdjg/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

The SECOND-greatest time travel episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE is on ME-TV tonight @ 12:35am EST: “THE TROUBLE WITH TEMPLETON” (Written by E. Jack Neuman, directed by Buzz Kulik, originally broadcast December 9, 1960) Twilight Zone’s second-season “Templeton” is television writer-producer (Dr. Kildaire, Police Story) E. Jack Neuman’s single script for the series—but it’s a bona fide classic, and ranks as the series’ second-greatest time travel episode, after only the Citizen Kane of Television, Twilight Zone creator and head writer Rod Serling’s first-season “Walking Distance.” Aging stage actor Booth Templeton goes back in time 33 years—“Yesterday and its memories is what he wants,” Serling narrates—and is awed and startled to see his longed-for deceased wife and best friend in an actors’ speakeasy hangout alive and kicking (literally; check out actress Pippa Scott, in her immortal Twilight Zone scene-stealing role, busting a frantic and chilling Charleston). “And yesterday is what he’ll get,” Serling warns. What follows is one of The Twilight Zone’s most stunningly written, staged, lit and choreographed scenes, turning what might have been a somewhat sentimental exercise into something more tragic and true. Its abrupt fade-to-black ending is one of the most dramatic examples of the acute staginess of The Twilight Zone itself, a series of two-act plays filmed for television. “Templeton” is director Buzz Kulik’s second Twilight Zone episode (after the second season-opening “King Nine Will Not Return”). It's always bothered me that writer Neuman ends his episode with Serling's closing narration's travel metaphor of Templeton, "...who had a round-trip ticket into The Twilight Zone," when the whole episode was about the theater, the stage, acting--hence his opening narration about Templeton making "...his debut on another stage, in another world, that we call…The Twilight Zone"! Serling or producer Buck Houghton should've caught that mistake, and changed it to something like, "Mr. Booth Templeton, whose life was given a second act...in The Twilight Zone.” arlenschumer.com/twilight-zone #thetwilightzone✨ #rodserling #arlenschumer @dgareps @bearmanor.media https://www.instagram.com/p/CqYKGSLrkmP/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

TONIGHT on ME-TV @ 12:35am EST, one of the GREAT episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE: “THE LATENESS OF THE HOUR” (Written by Rod Serling, directed by Jack Smight, originally broadcast December 2, 1960) In “Lateness,” Serling posits domestic service robots so lifelike, so unmistakably “real,” complete with their own manufactured memories of the past, and authentic, individualized personalities in the present—one can draw a straight through-line from this episode to the recent HBO drama Westworld (and its 1973 film forebear). They’re the “hosts” to the elderly Dr. and Mrs. Will Loren, the “guests” in this Westworld analogy, though the husband who created them is their master, in the mansion where they all reside. Along with the star of the episode, their adult daughter, Jana (the incandescent Inger Stevens) who resents her robotic manse-mates, and from the moment the episode begins, is actively, vocally, rebelling against her parents’ hermetic, stifling, idling life of robotically-assisted leisure. For the balance of the episode, Jana’s quest to break free from her parentally-imposed lockdown lifestyle, and live her own life in the “real” world outside of what she derides as a mausoleum of a mansion, can be seen as Serling’s prescient preview of the generation gap between America’s Baby Boom youth and the older Establishment that would erupt in the many counter-cultural clashes of The Sixties. At the same time, “Lateness” is one of many TZ episodes eerily clairvoyant of our 21st Century Covid crisis, because they deal with the same themes of isolation, loneliness, and solitude. Jana’s dawning acceptance of her own true nature as just another one of her father’s “highly complicated toys” is heartbreaking, as Stevens’ own stunning, statuesque beauty makes the transition from human to robot that much more convincing. “No pain at all!” Jana cries, as she slams her invulnerable, robotic wrist repeatedly into the handrail of the mansion stairway—but we feel pain, watching her finally transformed by her father into just another doting maid, massaging Mrs. Loren in her easy chair, just as the episode began. @dgareps #arlenschumer https://www.instagram.com/p/CqVmP7BuAQP/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

TONIGHT on ME-TV @ 12:35am EST, one of the GREAT episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE: “NICK OF TIME” (Written by Richard Matheson, directed by Richard L. Bare, originally broadcast November 18, 1960) Pre-Star Trek William Shatner’s first Twilight Zone episode, season two's “Nick of Time," has him portraying a young husband ceding control of his life to a small town luncheonette’s demonic fortune-telling machine—literally demonic, as it’s topped with a devil’s head, one of The Twilight Zone’s kitschiest but foreboding totems, a bobbling Beelzebub that (almost) steals the show from the magnetic Shatner. Of all the episodes that define the Twilight Zone descriptive phrase “science and superstition,” this one might be the most clear-cut illustration of it, mostly due to Matheson’s vehement, episode-long anti-superstition stance. Don keeps insatiably feeding the fortune-telling Devil, its pithy pronouncements increasingly confirming his superstitions, to the mounting chagrin of Pat, aghast—as we, the audience, are too—at the sight of a feverish Don clutching the Devil-head machine in his arms in an almost sexual embrace (now known as “mechanophilia”: a sexual attraction to machines), pleading to Pat, “Do you think I could just walk away from it?” She recapitulates Matheson’s episode theme when she delivers an ultimatum in response: “What matters is whether you believe more in luck and in fortune than you do in yourself!” Her words beak the Devil-head’s spell, and Don, his composure regained, embraces Pat, and together, they leave the luncheonette, turning back to the infernal machine with the kiss-off line, “...and go where we wanna go—anytime we please!” Following the Carters’ exit, an older couple enters the café, looking worn, tired, haggard. They sit at the same booth the Carters were in, drop a handful of pennies on the table, and with palpable desperation, begin to ask “The Mystic Seer” their questions: “Will we be able to leave Ridgeview today?” arlenschumer.com/twilight-zone #thetwilightzone✨ #rodserling #williamshatner #richardmatheson #arlenschumer @dgareps @bearmanor.media @nyadventureclub @altpick https://www.instagram.com/p/CqTByDfsp6j/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

TONIGHT on ME-TV @ 12:30am EST, the GREATEST episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE: “EYE OF THE BEHOLDER” (Written by Rod Serling, directed by Douglas Heyes, originally broadcast November 11, 1960) In “Eye of The Beholder,” Serling takes the age-old adage about beauty and gives it such a thorough Twilight Zone treatment that it remains the series’ quintessential episode. The script is a hallmark of Serling’s style: strong on theme, poetic dialogue, morality, and suspense, capped by a truly unforgettable ending that burns into your brain forever. The deft direction by Douglas Heyes and stunning camerawork by George T. Clemens, meant to obscure the doctors’ and nurses’ pig-like faces until the end (the masterworks of makeup man William Tuttle) are nothing if not artistically audacious, and utterly memorable. When it was originally telecast in 1960, chances are the bandaged Janet Tyler, considered hideously ugly and threatened with segregation with those of “her own kind” if her (eleventh!) plastic surgery failed, might have been seen as Serling’s poster child for the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement; certainly the antiseptic whiteness of the hospital milieu helped concretize the metaphor. But since then, the doctor's talk of quarantining those “similarly afflicted” reeks of AIDS-era ‘80s ignorance, while the rant by the pig-faced “Leader” about conforming to society’s norms not only parallels Serling’s own struggles with that era's television censors, but foretells the culture wars waged ever since: “It is essential in this society that we not only have a norm, but that we conform to that norm! Conformity we must worship and hold sacred! Conformity is the key to survival!” “Eye of the Beholder,” Serling’s message of tolerance and compassion, finally reveals that we are ALL Janet Tylers beneath our bandages, faceless and invisible to a society that would prefer nothing more than to render our individuality—to paraphrase another definitive Twilight Zone episode by Serling—“obsolete.” arlenschumer.com/twilight-zone #thetwilightzone✨ #rodserling #eyeofthebeholder #arlenschumer #tv #television #tvhistory #televisionhistory @dgareps @bearmanor.media @altpick https://www.instagram.com/p/CqQ_1O_vVDq/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

This WEDNESDAY, March 22 @ 6:00pm EST: COMIC BOOKS & THE TWILIGHT ZONE free webinar! According to Rod Serling’s widow, Carol, Serling was “…an admirer of fantasy and horror tales…his library was full of books by Poe and Lovecraft, Shelley and James, and work by their ‘great-grandchildren,’ published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Galaxy and If.” But did Serling’s library include comic books, like the 1950’s E.C. science-fiction stories with twist endings that so many Twilight Zone episodes resemble? For the answers to these and other questions—like how The Twilight Zone influenced comic books that came after the series—come to comic book and Twilight Zone historian (Visions from The Twilight Zone and The Silver Age of Comic Book Art) Arlen Schumer’s free webinar, and you’ll see The Twilight Zone, and the comic book stories that both influenced, and were influenced by, the legendary series, in ways that will make you see them all as if for the first time! ZOOM MEETING: https://bit.ly/3ZxjqON MEETING ID: 856 0593 2628 PASSCODE: 621743 #thetwilightzone✨ #rodserling #arlenschumer #comicbooks #twilightzonecomics #twilightzonememes @dgareps @bearmanor.media @nyadventureclub @altpick @richardsyrettstrangeplanet https://www.instagram.com/p/CqA_VLpsACE/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

TONIGHT on ME-TV @ 12:30am EST, one of the GREAT episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE: “A WORLD OF ONE’S OWN” (Written by Richard Matheson, directed by Ralph Nelson, originally broadcast July 1, 1960) The last episode of The Twilight Zone’s immortal first season, “A World of His Own” is writer Matheson’s lighter-hearted sister episode to his parallel-themed “A World of Difference.” Here, a playwright, Gregory West (Keenan Wynn, who worked with Serling four years earlier on “Requiem for a Heavyweight”) brings his characters to flesh and blood life by speaking them into literal existence via his tape recorder. The contrast between West's wife and his conjured mistress is as clear-cut as Archie Comics’ Betty is from Veronica; Matheson even gave them the analogous names Mary (the blonde mistress) and Victoria (the brunette wife). Revealed through Matheson’s sharp dialogue is the history of Gregory’s marriage to Victoria, that Matheson sees as the plight of many a young man: they search for the “perfect” woman, and if they think they’ve found one, up on a pedestal they put them—which only ends up diminishing themselves as inferior. West even admits to Victoria, “I feel so inadequate compared to you,” adding bluntly, “like a worm.” So West creates his ideal mistress descriptively on his tape recorder, written by Matheson as the wish-fulfillment woman of the post-Playboy, pre-Women’s Liberation American male: “Her name is Mary. She’s thirty, five feet-six inches, blonde hair, nicely built, clear complexion. She’s a plain, unassuming female, with that inner quality of loveliness that makes a woman truly beautiful. She is dressed in a soft pink blouse, old-fashioned brooch, flowing skirt. Her hair is attractively arranged. She is in her husband’s study, preparing him a drink.” Over six decades later, that rather reactionary description of the ideal woman/wife is still one that the bulk of American men who identify as conservative—and plenty who don’t—desire as much as Gregory West did. They just wish they, too, had a magic Twilight Zone tape recorder. arlenschumer.com/twilight-zone #thetwilightzone #rodserling #richardmatheson #arlenschumer @dgareps @bearmanor.media https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp-ZqFLMxL5/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

TONIGHT on ME-TV @ 12:35am EST, one of the GREAT episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE: “A PASSAGE FOR TRUMPET” (Written by Rod Serling, directed by Don Medford, originally broadcast May 20, 1960) “You’re in a kind of limbo...you’re neither here nor there...you’re in the middle, between the two...the real...and the shadow.” One of the best descriptions of The Twilight Zone itself, written by its creator Serling, and spoken by a very special character in “A Passage for Trumpet,” describing the posthumous, purgatorial state of Joey Crown, a trumpet player (played by Jack Klugman in the first of his four TZ episodes), after he commits suicide by jumping in front of a speeding truck. Crown, a once-great trumpeter, was distraught over losing gigs—and his trumpet to a pawn broker—because of his habitual drinking. The post-suicide, ghostlike Crown, after experiencing being invisible to and ignored by the living (cf. Bruce Willis in M. Night Shyamalan's 1999 film The Sixth Sense), returns to the back alley of his favorite jazz club (one of The Twilight Zone’s most stunningly designed sets, a skeletal framework of scaffolding lit in chiaroscuro by suspended construction lights), and hears some beautiful trumpet being played, coming not from inside the club, but from somewhere in the alley. Playing that trumpet is the “very special character,” acted by the avuncular John Anderson (who’ll star in season two's "The Odyssey of Flight 33" and five’s “The Old Man in the Cave”). After letting Joey take a toot of his horn, he proceeds to gently counsel Crown, coaxing him to a broader understanding of himself and of life; that Joey Crown was more than just a great trumpet player, that he had more to offer both himself and the world around him. The Anderson character bids Joey goodbye, and walks away, horn in hand, down the scaffolded walkway into the darkness, but stops when Crown calls out to him, asking for his name. Anderson, bathed in a halo-like aura from the hanging light above, responds, “Call me Gabe...short for Gabriel.” arlenschumer.com/twilight-zone #rodserling #twilightzone #arlenschumer @dgareps @bearmanor.media https://www.instagram.com/p/Cpxk_kWs8Ad/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=