It’s as close to a silent movie as the show ever did, with the music, the postapocalyptic set design (the street sign covered in vegetation still gets us) and the actors doing all of the heavy lifting. The catch is that there’s hardly any dialogue at all (and had the episode actually done away with those few didactic lines about the futility of it all, it might have ranked higher on this list).
One of the more formally audacious half hours of the show’s five-year run, this literal two-hander finds a brutish soldier (Charles Bronson) duking it out with his female counterpart (Elizabeth Montgomery) as the last two survivors of World War III. (Probably the former, since the mother overhears a conversation about chocolate ice cream and totally flips.) Either way, it’s undoubtedly one of the more disturbing episodes of the series. In typical Zone fashion, we never actually hear her speaking on the other end of the line, leaving audiences to debate whether it’s really her or simply a child grappling with death for the first time. As if that isn’t creepy enough, she keeps coercing him to attempt suicide - from jumping in front of a car to laying in a pond - so he can join Grandma Dearest in the afterlife. Most Twilight Zone fans know Billy Mumy as the omnipotent kid who sent a Perry Como fan to the cornfield in “It’s a Good Life.” But before that, the child actor an episode about a boy who communicates with his dead grandma through a toy telephone she gifted him before she passed away. “Long Distance Call” (Season 2, Episode 22) And from the moment everyone puts these horrific things on - the better to reveal the ugliness inside all of them, my dear - we’re treated to one of the most unsettling collections of blank-faced characters delving into a dark night of the soul short of that Eyes Wide Shut orgy. Before he goes gently into the night, however, the man has one caveat: his future “mourners” must spend the evening wearing grotesque masks until the clock strikes midnight. A dying patriarch (Robert Keith) has assembled his family so they can say their goodbyes the greedy bastards are more interested in divvying up his wealth.
This late-season highlight - directed by actor-turned-pioneering-female-filmmaker Ida Lupino - starts out as a slow-burner brimming with passive-aggressive bitchery. From hidden martians and hungry aliens to the monsters living next door to you, here are our contenders for the 25 best Twilight Zone episodes. There was usually a twist, involving a heavy dose of irony, Faustian bargaining and the pettier aspects of human nature tipping the scales of cosmic justice (TV host/podcaster/stand-up comic Chris Hardwick used to do a bit that suggested a better title for the show would be “Nice Try, Asshole.”)Īnd as Jordan Peele steps into Serling’s shoes and gives us a Twilight Zone for the Trump era, courtesy of CBS All Access, there’s no better time to revisit the original show’s high points. The stories could take place in a futuristic dystopia or a suburban street not unlike your own. Just ask anyone who’s pored through all five seasons or spent an entire holiday weekend indoors thanks to all-day marathons - almost 60 years after it debuted, Rod Serling’s sci-fi anthology show remains a groundbreaking, genre-busting take on the gray area between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge.
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