Dang it! I’m a robot🤖 #twilightzone #season4 #charlesbeaumont #rodserling #robot #georgegrizzard #scifi #inhisimage #robotics #blackandwhite #60stv #westworld #bots @thetwilightzone @cbsallaccess @bsaspod @jordanpeele @westworldhbo @syfy https://www.instagram.com/p/CCyqR7pp2X9/?igshid=v5jtqbzm6vj6

TONIGHT on ME-TV @ 12:35am EST, one of the GREAT episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE: “A NICE PLACE TO VISIT” (Written by Charles Beaumont, directed by John Brahm, originally broadcast April 15, 1960) This episode is writer Beaumont’s hat black comedy at its best. The verbal sparring between garrulous gangster Rocky Valentine and the girthy, ghostly Pip has a crackling comedic edge throughout the episode, and pays off with one of The Twilight Zone’s most delicious surprise endings. At the top of the episode, the larcenous Valentine (Larry Blyden) is killed by police gunfire, but lives on in the afterlife, and meets the white-haired, white-bearded, white-suited, portly Pip (Sebastian Cabot). After ample proof of Pip’s invulnerable, impervious corporeality, Valentine assumes he’s his guardian angel, and they’re in heaven. And why wouldn’t he assume that, since Pip prodigiously provides him with everything he wishes for at the drop of a dime: dollars, duds, dames, and digs. Rocky’s cup runneth over, and Blyden dances a jaunty jig at mid-episode break. But soon after, Valentine’s posthumous partying peters out—he wins every bet he gambles on, his harem of sultry sex dolls bores him, just breaking rack at pool sinks every ball. He questions Pip as to what he did in his life to earn him such heavenly largesse, so Pip brings him to The Hall of Records. The Hall’s simple but suggestive set design, creating a sense of infinite vastness that belies the small screen it was intended for, is one to rival the awesome after-the-bomb library stairs set of director Brahm’s earlier Twilight Zone classic, “Time Enough at Last.” The litany of illegalities and sins Pip reads off the records baffles Rocky, sending him back to Chez Valentine. Bored out of his mind, he comes to the conclusion that he just doesn’t belong in this too-perfect paradise, and pleads to Pip that he’d rather be sent to “the other place.” That’s when we’re finally shown the true, devilish demeanor of Pip’s heretofore angelic appearance, as his voice booms for the first time: “This IS ‘the other place’!” arlenschumer.com/twilight-zone #twilightzone #charlesbeaumont #arlenschumer @dgareps @bearmanor.media https://www.instagram.com/p/Cpkn5HurjnU/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

TONIGHT on ME-TV @ 12:35am EST, one of the GREATEST episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE: “PERCHANCE TO DREAM” (written by Charles Beaumont, directed by Robert Florey, originally broadcast November 27, 1959) Esteemed writer Charles Beaumont’s “Perchance to Dream” is not only his first episode for creator Rod Serling’s fledgling new series, but it’s the first of his two noirish Twilight Zone episodes on the nature of dreams vis-a-vis reality; the other is season two’s “Shadow Play.” The circus and roller coaster dream sequences in “Perchance...” (filmed at the Santa Monica pier) are among the most visceral Twilight Zone scenes ever filmed—“It was the kind of place you see only in nightmares, everything warped and twisted out of shape, but it was real, too”—and not surprising, as director Florey’s horror resume goes back to the 1932 horror classic, The Murders in the Rue Morgue. But the real star of this episode is a woman in a peculiarly powerful, secondary role that remains mysteriously memorable: Suzanne Lloyd plays the mesmerizing “Maya, the Cat-Girl,” a raven-haired, leopard-skin-clad vixen who tempts Conte’s latent libido by dancing an overtly sexual tarantella (especially for 1959 American television audiences) at the Tunnel of Love, beckoning Conte inside with “...her dark...cat’s...eyes!” and a Mona Lisa-like smile and devilish demeanor that is both strangely alluring and utterly repellent—a true Angel of Death. What is most remarkable about this enigmatic episode is how absolutely modern in tone it is, as its underlying theme, beyond that of dreams vs. reality, is one of male sexual obsession--for Conte’s character is finally revealed to have been stalking the secretary of the psychiatrist he’s seeing, after having seen her before on the street (listen closely to his--and her--revealing dialogue throughout the episode). In his feverish mind, Conte conjured up Lloyd’s lascivious Maya persona to “blame” her for inexorably enticing him to his death, his “punishment” for his suppressed sexuality. Talk about blaming the victim! arlenschumer.com/twilight-zone #rodserling #twilightzone #thetwilightzone #charlesbeaumont #arlenschumer @dgareps @nyadventureclub https://www.instagram.com/p/CosHJgKrlLv/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

TONIGHT on ME-TV @ 12:30am EST, one of the GREAT episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE: "PERSON OR PERSONS UNKNOWN" (written by Charles Beaumont, directed by John Brahm, originally broadcast March 23, 1962) In this taut, tense, noirish tale, writer Beaumont posits the paradox, “What would you do if, all of a sudden, everybody started telling you, you weren’t you?”—his take on Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling’s worst fear of all, “...the fear of the unknown working on you,” Serling described, “which you cannot share with others.” Author Jonathan ("Fortress of Solitude") Lethem: “What Serling created was a homegrown vernacular of alienation, identity slippage and paranoia, and he did it right when it most needed doing, when his audience was starved for a vocabulary to express their uneasiness—and he did it on weekly television. Just the titles of the best episodes read like a found poem of All-American dread.” We can all "identify" with the dehumanizing dread inherent in Beaumont’s chilling, clinical title, "Person or Persons Unknown." Director Brahm helmed some of The Twilight Zone’s greatest episodes, among them the classics Time Enough at Last, Judgment Night, Mirror Image, Shadow Play, and You Drive. Look for his mid-episode on-screen Hitchcockian cameo as a mental patient who thinks he's Winston Churchill! arlenschumer.com/twilight-zone #thetwilightzone #rodserling #twilightzone #charlesbeaumont #richardlong #arlenschumer #tv #television #tvhistory #televisionhistory #identity @dgareps @dbbushman @richardsyrettstrangeplanet @nyadventureclub https://www.instagram.com/p/CmUcbf0prN9/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

TONIGHT @ 12:35am EST on ME-TV, one of the GREAT episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE: "THE JUNGLE" (written by Charles Beaumont, Directed by William Claxton, originally aired December 1, 1961) Charles Beaumont’s “The Jungle” (based on his own short story) fulfill's Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling's original description of the Zone as one that lies "..between science and superstition," a dimension "...not only of sight and mind" but of "sound," one of that sensual trinity that is often overlooked in The Twilight Zone, given the intense domination of the other two. Yet that is precisely how protagonist Alan Richards (the great John Dehner) begins his descent into The Twilight Zone, via sound--the sounds of the jungle animals that he can't get out of his head as he faces a particular superstitious dread of every New Yorker: crossing Central Park at night! Dehner's character plays out over the chasm--or, in his case, the abyss--between "science and superstition," as he navigates between his fellow financiers who want to build their African dam over the homes of the natives, and his own wife's grim warning of certain, horrible death as cursed by the shaman she believes in, if construction commences. There's a delicious moment mid-episode when a frazzled Dehner pauses before entering the Park, and contemplates turning back, towards the steps of a large church opposite the entrance. In that moment Beaumont lays plain modern man's continual choice, between a world built on rational, logical, scientific facts, or one of faith and yes, superstition. Sound familiar? The episode’s grisly final scene—the lion in the bedroom—ranks as one of The Twilight Zone’s most startlingly surreal juxtapositions, echoed visually in the surrealism that preceded the show, Magritte's 1940 "The Wedding Breakfast," and the pop culture that the series influenced, Chris Van Allsburg's interior illustration for his 1982 children's book, "Jumanji." arlenschumer.com/twilight-zone #twilightzone #thetwilightzone #rodserling #charlesbeaumont #arlenschumer #tv #television #tvhistory #televisionhistory #thejungle @dgareps @richardsyrettstrangeplanet @nyadventureclub @adamschumer https://www.instagram.com/p/ClmVWXKugBv/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

TONIGHT on ME-TV @ 12:35am EST, one of the GREAT episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE: “LIVING DOLL” (written by Jerry Sohl, credited to Charles Beaumont, directed by Richard C. Sarafian, originally broadcast November 1, 1963) One of the most loved and fondly remembered Twilight Zone episodes, “Living Doll” (ghost-written by Sohl because Beaumont was suffering that year from a bizarre combination of Alzheimer’s and Pick’s disease, which would eventually kill him in 1967 at the age of 38) is the last of the series’ best doppelgangers, dummies and dolls that come to life, and works on more levels than you might initially think. Though inspired by toymaker Mattel’s popular “Chatty Cathy” talking doll (after you pulled its string in back), and voiced by June Foray, she of a thousand-and-one cartoon voices—most famously, Rocky of “Rocky & Bullwinkle”—and the voice of “Cathy” too, “Living Doll” is about more than the story of a man (Telly Savalas) tormented, eventually to death, by a talking doll, Talky Tina, who made good on her words, “I’m Talky Tina and I’m going to kill you!” It’s also a jaundiced-eye look at a broken home, a troubled second marriage, in which Savalas’ stepfather character refuses to actively love his stepdaughter (bordering into abuse), straining his relationship with her mother—all this at a time when the rest of American television was habitually portraying the happily-married, intact nuclear family, in sitcoms like Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, Make Room for Daddy, and others. Ergo “Living Doll” is living proof of creator Rod Serling’s magnum opus being ahead of its time, by years if not decades. Talky Tina’s malevolent mischievousness eventually cross-gendered into the Chucky film (and now television) franchise, just another example of Serling & Company’s The Twilight Zone being The Father of American Popular Culture. #rodserling #thetwilightzone #twilightzone #charlesbeaumont #talkytina #livingdoll #tellysavalas #arlenschumer #juneforay #tv #television #tvhistory #televisionhistory #bernardherrmann @dgareps @dbbushman @adamschumer @richard_syrett https://www.instagram.com/p/CasOtLgpTcn/?utm_medium=tumblr

TONIGHT on ME-TV @ 12:35am EST, one of the GREAT episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE: "PERSON OR PERSONS UNKNOWN" (written by Charles Beaumont, directed by John Brahm, originally broadcast March 23, 1962) In this taut, tense, noirish tale, writer Beaumont posits the paradox, “What would you do if, all of a sudden, everybody started telling you, you weren’t you?”—his take on Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling’s worst fear of all, “...the fear of the unknown working on you,” Serling once described, “which you cannot share with others.” Author Jonathem Lethem: “What Serling created was a homegrown vernacular of alienation, identity slippage and paranoia, and he did it right when it most needed doing, when his audience was starved for a vocabulary to express their uneasiness—and he did it on weekly television. Just the titles of the best episodes read like a found poem of All-American dread.” We can all "identify" with the dehumanizing dread inherent in this episode's chilling, clinical title, "Person or Persons Unknown." Director Brahm helmed some of the series' greatest episodes, among them the classics Time Enough at Last, Judgment Night, Mirror Image, and You Drive. Look for his mid-episode on-screen Hitchcockian cameo as a mental patient who thinks he's Winston Churchill! #twilightzone #thetwilightzone #rodserling #charlesbeaumont #richardlong #personorpersonsunknown #johnbrahm #tv #television #tvhistory #televisionhistory @dgareps @dbbushman @adamschumer @richard_syrett https://www.instagram.com/p/CZ-gvXNM6tW/?utm_medium=tumblr

TONIGHT on ME-TV @ 12:35am EST, one of the DEFINITIVE episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE: “SHADOW PLAY” (written by Charles Beaumont, directed by John Brahm, originally broadcast May 5, 1961) Though convicted murderer Dennis Weaver (in one of the epitomes of tense Twilight Zone performances) tries to share his recurring nightmare of electrocution with his fellow death-row inmates in “Shadow Play” (the second of writer Beaumont’s two great Twilight Zone episodes about the nature of dreams; the other, season one’s “Perchance to Dream”), beseeching anyone who’ll listen that they, too, are all part of his dream, it is to no avail—he is condemned to walk the last mile every night. Keep an eye—and ear—out for the marvelous mid-episode jump cut from Weaver getting electrocuted to a sizzling steak in a suburban oven, a surreal, even Dada-like juxtaposition that rivals Kubrick’s bone-to-spaceship jump cut in 2001. Writer Beaumont introduces, perhaps for the first time, the concept of "meta" into the American consciousness with this episode, as the underlying premise is that Weaver's conception of being on death row is only based on what he's seen in movies! Movie writer/director Cameron Crowe was so beholden to “Shadow Play” that he had it playing on the Jumbotron in a totally deserted Times Square (save for a panicked Tom Cruise) during the opening scene of his 2001 film Vanilla Sky (itself a remake of a ’97 Twilight Zone-ish Spanish film, Open Your Eyes), which deals with similar themes acted out in the twilight zone between dream and reality, as Beaumont concluded: "We know that a dream can be real, but who ever thought that reality could be a dream? We exist, of course, but how, in what way? As we believe, as flesh-and-blood human beings, or are we simply parts of someone's feverish, complicated nightmare? Think about it, and then ask yourself, do you live here, in this country, in this world, or do you live, instead...in The Twilight Zone?" #thetwilightzone #twilightzone #rodserling #charlesbeaumont #johnbrahm #tv #television #tvhistory #televisionhistory #dennisweaver #arlenschumer @dgareps @dbbushman @adamschumer @richard_syrett https://www.instagram.com/arlenschumer/p/CYj_4iSPMt7/?utm_medium=tumblr