Twilight Zone: The Movie
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_theatrical_poster.jpg) Wanna see something scary?
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"You unlock this door with a key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension; a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, and a dimension of mind. You are moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You have just crossed over into The Twilight Zone."
— Narration (Burgess Meredith)
Twilight Zone: The Movie is an 1983 science-fiction horror anthology film based on the television series of the same name by Rod Serling, this film is directed by John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante and George Miller in different segments.
Plot
The film begins with the driver (Albert Brooks) and passenger (Dan Aykroyd) driving on a long night road, after the music player is broken they begin to play music guess game and talking what's their favorite Twilight Zone episodes like Time Enough at Last, A Kind of a Stopwatch and The After Hours, the passenger told to pull up the car and show "something really scary" which the driver is interested but it revealed that the passenger is a monster killing off the driver.
Time Out
Loosely based on Deaths-Head Revisited and A Quality of Mercy
- "You're about to meet an angry man: Mr. William Connor, who carries on his shoulder a chip the size of the national debt. This is a sour man, a lonely man, who's tired of waiting for the breaks that come to others, but never to him. Mr. William Connor, whose own blind hatred is about to catapult him into the darkest corner of The Twilight Zone."
Mr. William "Bill" Connor (Vic Morrow) greets his two friends in the bar where Conner had a terrible day when his promotion is passed over to a Jewish co-worker that Conner becomes very bitter and utters slurs towards Jews, African-Americans, and Asians as his friends tried to calm Conner down but he angrily storms off the bar.
After leaving the bar, Conner was shocked that he was in Nazi-occupied France in World War II, he was encountered by a pair of Schutzstaffel officers as they going to shoot or capture him, Conner was in the building but been surrounded by the armies as the officers shoot to make him fall off the building, until he landed on the ground that he's in the US South 1950s where Conner is captured by Ku Klux Klansmen as he quickly escape from them and hiding in the river, he's in the jungle of Vietnam War that he tried to call out American soldiers but they shooting randomly thinking it was a Vietnamese solider.
After being blown out by one of the American soldier's grenades he sent back to World War II and been captured by the Nazis they cast him into a cargo train along with other Jews, Conner looked out and saw his two friends which he tried to call them for help but they can't hear or see him as the cargo train moved.
Kick the Can
Based on the same name
- "It is sometimes said that where there is no hope, there is no life. Case in point: the residents of Sunnyvale Rest Home, where hope is just a memory. But Hope just checked into Sunnyvale, disguised as an elderly optimist, who carries his magic in a shiny tin can."
Leo Conroy (Bill Quinn) is staying in Sunnyvale Retirement Home while his family is leaving, he lives with other elders like Mister and Miss Weinstein, Mrs. Dempsey, Mr. Agee, and Mr. Mute discussing their childhood games while one elderly man named Mr. Bloom (Scatman Crothers) like to play Kick the can and even see the others play like they we're children but Conroy objects it because they cannot engage in physical activity.
In the night, Bloom wakes up the others to play outside, and then all the elders become young and can play their childhood games they are happy but they notice practical matters as they want to turn back again which Bloom happily agrees. All the children went back to bed, Conroy noticed a sound and saw children in the room as he tried to tell the owner of the retirement what happened but the elders were back to normal, except for Mr. Agee who could live on as a teenager. Before Agee leaves, Conroy is told to go with him along but Agee says it is impossible.
The next morning, Conroy decided to kick the can in the yard as he had now changed his outlook on life. Mr. Bloom happily tells the audience "He'll get it." and departs from Sunnyvale to another retirement home where he could bring good-natured magic to other senior citizens.
It's a Good Life
Based on the same name
- "Portrait of a woman in transit: Helen Foley, age 27. Occupation: schoolteacher. Up until now, the pattern of her life has been one of unrelenting sameness, waiting for something different to happen. Helen Foley doesn't know it yet, but her waiting has just ended."
Helen Foley (Kathleen Quinlan) is driving that she could become a schoolteacher in another state, she stop in the café for lunch and asked the owner (Dick Miller) for directions until she noticed the adults picking on one kid named Anthony (Jeremy Licht) that he slams at the Tempest arcade cabinet that caused to disconnected the TV then Anthony leaves.
Helen accidentally hit Anthony's bike which she could travel to his home, she was greeted by Anthony's Mother and Father, Uncle Walt and sister Ethel, Helen had a look around the strange house along with Anthony, Helen noticed someone was in the bedroom which Anthony said it was his other sister Sara that she was in an accident and stayed in the wheelchair. (After Helen leaves, the camera reveals Sara doesn't have a mouth)
Helen was watching cartoons with Anthony and his family when a mother brought out the dinner but it consisted of ice cream, candy apples, potato chips, and hamburgers topped with peanut butter which Helen didn't notice it was Anthony's birthday, Anthony told Uncle Walt to do a magic trick by pulling the rabbit out of the hat which it succeeded which Helen could leave but Anthony using psychic to pulled out a large, mutant rabbit and put it back, Helen was frightened as Anthony could be tried to make her safe until he noticed a note that said "Help us! Anthony is a monster!" which the family pointed to Ethel, which Ethel told Helen that Anthony's family wasn't his real relatives that Anthony's original mother and father hated their son which Anthony killed them. Anthony used a psychic to send Ethel on the television that she had been chased and eaten alive by a cartoon monster.
Anthony is so angry that he wants everything erased except for Helen and sends his "family" back to where they came from. He cannot understand why everyone is unhappy with him, since he believes he provided for their every possible desire. Helen offers to be Anthony's teacher, and even help him find new uses for his power for good which Anthony happily agrees as they drive off in the car.
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
Based on the same name
- "What you're looking at could be the end of a particularly terrifying nightmare. It isn't. It's the beginning. Introducing Mr. John Valentine, air traveler. His destination: The Twilight Zone."
In the flying airliner on a stormy night, a passenger named John Valentine (John Lithgow) has a fear of flying the Flight attendant calmed him down that everything will be alright after the attendant left, he noticed a creature is outside and hanging on wing of the plane which he called out but the creature quickly avoid to be seen that everyone thinks John is going crazy.
John tried every time to spot the creature with a camera but it backfired which only showed the reflection which the creature was destroying the wing engine, so he decided to destroy the window and used the detective's gun to shoot it down but the creature ate it which it was a gremlin who was messing the engine, the gremlin leaves while the airliner is landed and then John was been sent to the mental hospital. As the crew going to check the wing of the plane, they noticed the engine had been slashed and badly damaged.
John was dropped off when he heard a piece of music and the person who drove the ambulance was the passenger from the Prologue which ended by telling John. "Wanna see something really scary?"
- "There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone."
Good Qualities
- Many of the actors and actresses are very solid in portraying the characters like Albert Brooks and Dan Aykroyd as the driver and passenger, Scatman Crothers as gold-hearted Mr. Bloom, Kathleen Quinlan as curiously Helen Foley, late Vic Morrow as bigot but frighten Bill Conner, John Lithgow as aviophobia John Valentine and more.
- Jerry Goldsmith's score is really good to keep the tone of the television series.
- Although it was a recreation of the most popular Twilight Zone episodes, it kept the source material very faithfully.
- Time Out is loosely based on Deaths-Head Revisited and A Quality of Mercy which this is the only Twilight Zone segment is made something new.
- It was directed by four of them, which is John Landis for Time Out, Prologue and Epilogue, Steven Spielberg for Kick the Can, Joe Dante for It's a Good Life and George Miller for Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, was very impressive to give four directors to make four stories in a single movie.
- The animatronics and puppets are surprisingly good like the deformed rabbit and cartoon demon from It's a Good Life and most notably the gremlin from Nightmare at 20,000 Feet which was a massive improvement from the original version where changed from a silly-looking with clown makeup to vicious nightmare creature.
- Amazing visual effects and settings.
Bad Qualities
- The scene being shot at the time of Vic Morrow's fatal accident was added to the script in an attempt to "soften" his bigoted character Bill Connor, and give him some redemption: while fleeing from American attacks on a Vietnamese village, he sees two orphaned children. Bill decides to save them no matter what the cost, so he carries them under his arms and wades through the river to safety. He then finds himself back in Nazi-occupied France again, the two kids having time-jumped with him. The Nazis take the kids away for execution and take Bill to a train. Due to the helicopter accident that claimed the life of Morrow and child actors Renee Chen and My-ca Dinh Le, all scenes featuring the children were completely cut. Bill's originally scripted ending was kept in, leaving Bill's character change largely unaddressed.
- Kick the Can is considered one of the weakest segments.
Reception
Box office
Twilight Zone: The Movie opened at number 4, grossing $6,614,366 in its opening weekend at 1,275 theaters, averaging $5,188 per theater (adjusting to $15,076,555 and a $11,825 average in 2009). It later expanded to 1,288 theaters and ended up grossing $29,450,919 in the United States and Canada. In International, it grossed $12.5 million for a worldwide gross of $42 million. While it was not the enormous hit that executives were looking for, it was still a financial success.
Critical response
Although Twilight Zone: The Movie received mixed reviews from critics, it received favorable reviews from fans of the TV show and later became a cult favorite. On the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 58% "rotten" approval rating, based on 40 reviews, with a rating average of 5.85/10. The critical consensus reads, "The Twilight Zone: The Movie suffers from the typical anthology-film highs and lows; thankfully, the former outnumber the latter.", while the audience score is 55%. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 44 out of 100, based on eight reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews" and a user score of 7.1/10. On IMDb, it has a 6.5/10 score.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gives each segment individually, rating them (on a scale of four stars): two for the prologue and first segment, one-and-a-half for the second, three-and-a-half stars for the third, and three-and-a-half for the final. Ebert noticed that "the surprising thing is, the two superstar directors are thoroughly routed by two less-known directors whose previous credits have been horror and action pictures... Spielberg, who produced the whole project, perhaps sensed that he and Landis had the weakest results, since he assembles the stories in an ascending order of excitement. Twilight Zone starts slow, almost grinds to a halt, and then has a fast comeback."
Videos
Trailer
Review
Trivia
- In August 2013, Joseph Kosinski was announced to direct. The studio hired Aron Eli Coleite to pen the screenplay for the film which will not be an anthology but use various elements from the Twilight Zone universe.
- Steven Spielberg was originally making the second segment based on The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street which was his favorite Twilight Zone episode, but it was canceled due to the helicopter accident which he was afraid that the episode is involved nighttime filming with children, he decided to make Kick the Can instead.
- In It's A Good Life segment, Bill Mumy who played Anthony Fremont from the original version appeared as a customer in the café named Tim.
- Joe Dante made It's A Good Life while he's working on the storyboard of Gremlins.
External links
Twilight Zone: The Movie at the Internet Movie Database
Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) on Rotten Tomatoes
Twilight Zone: The Movie on Metacritic
Twilight Zone: The Movie on Letterboxd