TWILIGHT ZONE THE MOVIE

 

 

Twilight Zone The Movie is, of course, the film version of the popular classic TV show that was narrated by the late Rod Serling. In the film, the late Burgess Meredith--who had starred in some of the show's most popular episodes--does the narrating duties. The movie consists of four stories, including stories directed by such noted directors like Steven Spielberg and John Landis. The first story involves a bigot who gets a dose of his own medicine when he gets transported to different times in history when various race relations weren't at their best such as Nazi-occupied France and the Deep South back when lynchings were all the rage. (Warning: the main character in this story uses various racial epithets including The N Word.) The second story is decidedly more lighthearted as it stars the late Scatman Crothers as a rather mystical character who travels from one nursing home to another teaching the elderly residents how to stay young . . . literally. The third story involves a young boy with unusual powers who entraps people in a home of his own design and forces them to be his surrogate family--after he's, of course, disposed of his own family for "disobeying" him--until he befriends a teacher who, er, teaches him new ways to use rather than abuse his powers. The fourth story is a redoing of one of the show's most popular episodes of all-time about a rather mentally unstable man--played in the redo by John Lithgow replacing William "Capt. Kirk" Shatner in the B & W original--on a plane during a storm when he looks out the window and sees a horrible creature trying to tear apart the plane's engine. Of course, his fellow passengers and crew alike thinks he's nuts until they discover otherwise after they're forced to make an emergency landing and they see the engine all torn to pieces. The movie also features a rather interesting prologue and epilogue sequence starring Dan Aykroyd (of Ghostbusters and Saturday Night Live fame). (You'll, of course, just have to watch the flick to see what I mean by "interesting," all right?) I thought the movie was akin to the Stephen King flick Creepshow, though I found it not as good. Still, it's a decent enough flick to pass the time with. It should especially appeal to diehard--and maybe not-as-diehard--fans of the original TV show. A sidenote: This film drew some controversy for the deaths of actor Vic Morrow--who starred as the bigot in the movie's first story--and two Asian child actors during a horrific accident involving a helicopter stunt and some heavy pyrotechnics. What made the deaths all the more horrific was that their deaths were actually caught on-camera by about three or four different angles. It turns out the producers of the film reportedly paid the child actors under the table, so to speak, to get around certain child labor laws of the time. It probably goes without saying that said producers of the film got their asses sued by the children's families until said producers were finally found a decade later not guilty of manslaughter. It also probably goes without saying that future film producers became less likely to pull this kind of irresponsible crap on future films (for, I feel, for obvious reasons).