Halloween Fun! The Best "Twilight Zone" Horror Movies

[Dead & Messed Up]

In the past two years, I've celebrated Halloween by judging the most Lovecrafty movies ever made and the best Stephen King adaptations. This year, I'm looking at thirteen good-to-great horror flicks that mirror classic, creepy episodes from The Twilight Zone. Whether purposeful or accidental, these movies showcase the same imagination and excitement that made Serling's series so fantastic.

For a fun time, watch the episode and movie of each entry back to back - you decide the order.

...

...you will reach a point where it might be difficult to decide which is reality and which is nightmare, a problem uncommon perhaps but rather peculiar to the Twilight Zone.


13. "Twenty-Two" / Final Destination


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uD6rBp4ndE8/UkpatKbFUYI/AAAAAAAACOI/piniv_3jhqY/s1600/TwilightZone-12-TwentyTwo.jpg

"Twenty-Two" (wri. Rod Serling, dir. Jack Smight, Season Two)
Watch It on Hulu (http://www.hulu.com/watch/440752)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eWUt8N7NNOg/UkpatBTvCUI/AAAAAAAACOM/6XxcPNYhlqU/s1600/TwilightZone-12-FinalDestination1.jpg

Final Destination (dir. James Wong, 2000)


What's So Similar?


Both focus on heroes who have a horrifying precognitive dream steeped in awareness of their own mortality. Both heroes are immediately dismissed as a basket case. Both are right on the money. Go figure. There's also a potent image at the end of the Twilight Zone episode that's replicated in Final Destination, but that's as far as I want to go with that.


What's So Different?


Serling's story is based on an old E. F. Benson story that will sound familiar even if you haven't seen any permutation. It's the old tale about the specter in the morgue who says to a hero, "Room for one more," and how that specter re-appears later in the hero's life. Final Destination takes the idea of a mortal premonition and turns it into a logical game - if you can predict your death and then evade it, Death gets pissed and tries to find a way to kill you by "natural" means. If you beat it, Death tries again, unless you saved somebody else's life with your premonition. Then that person becomes the new target. By having teens as its heroes, Final Destination adds another layer to the fear of mortality - there's no other age where death seems so distant.


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6-CthHwRLoU/UkpatDsTXtI/AAAAAAAACOc/zNzzPcrOIJs/s1600/TwilightZone-12-FinalDestination2.jpg

What's So Special?


Serling's episode offers plenty of dread, with its wordless passages that focus on Liz Powell (Barbara Nichols) wandering through the hallways of her own nightmares, and its twist - while familiar - still packs a punch. One of the creepier ideas is that, if Liz wasn't haunted before, she sure as hell is now. Final Destination ends up going in a different direction, acting as a stripped-down slasher, where a flesh-and-blood killer would be a redundancy. There are a few times when the flick feels more complex than engaging, but the infamous plane crash scene is still horrifying, and, by making the story about the futility of evading death, the film gains some extra weight.

[MadMan]

I haven't seen that episode or Final Destination. I fail.

[Spun Lepton]

I haven't seen that episode or Final Destination. I fail.

This surprises me, MadMan. Final Destination is quite fun. Part 2 is fun for different reasons. Parts 3 and 4 are worth skipping. Part 5 is all right.

[Dead & Messed Up]

...Five improbable entities stuck together into a pit of darkness. No logic, no reason, no explanation; just a prolonged nightmare in which fear, loneliness, and the unexplainable walk hand in hand...


12. "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" / Cube

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-b89EhhI91As/Ukulom76afI/AAAAAAAACOw/8Xhjutw-Kxo/s1600/TwilightZone-11-FiveCharacters.jpg
"Five Characters..." (wri. Rod Serling, dir. Lamont Johnson, Season Three)
Watch It on Hulu (http://www.hulu.com/watch/440763)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6PSh7SEheRA/UkuloZyL2oI/AAAAAAAACO4/FQBHPPlCnGE/s1600/TwilightZone-11-Cube.jpg
Cube (dir. Vincenzo Natali, 1997)

What's So Similar?

Imagine being dropped in an empty room. There's no exit... or if there is, the means of getting out are unknown. Imagine not being sure why you're there. Is there a purpose, or are you just being toyed with? Very quickly you learn about the people stuck with you. Very quickly the room becomes a prison. And what you learn is that no one knows what brought them there, or what might be on the outside.


What's So Different?
Serling's story deals with five costumed characters: a ballerina, a clown, a hobo, an army major, and a bagpiper. And none of them have any memory of a life before falling into their prison. Despite that, the army major yearns to escape, and he comes up with a plan that just might catch him a glimpse of the big world beyond - in this universe, there's a definite answer. Meanwhile, Cube doesn't have a clear-cut solution to its prison or the world outside; it prefers ambiguity. Additionally, it gives its characters a knowledge of who they were before they got cubed - ordinary people, mostly. Their descent into acrimony, distrust, and murder feels far removed from the humanism of "Five Characters in Search of an Exit."


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Fqpf70EuS1g/UkulokTdJiI/AAAAAAAACO0/9a_OLxtaEP8/s1600/TwilightZone-11-Cube2.jpg

What's So Special?

The immediate mystery. Because the characters never know more than the viewer, there's an easy sympathy and equal desire to know just what in the h-e-double-hell is going on. "Five Characters In Search of an Exit" has the benefit of brevity, but it also has an engaging episode-long "argument" between the gung-ho Major and the depressed Clown. Cube doesn't have anyone as likable as Serling's story, but it carries the same claustrophobia and mystery, and it amps up the potent allegory even further, becoming a microcosm of human existence. The characters define their identity, bring their talents to the problems at hand, and their environment - like the world - is as inscrutable as it is deadly.

[MadMan]

This surprises me, MadMan. Final Destination is quite fun. Part 2 is fun for different reasons. Parts 3 and 4 are worth skipping. Part 5 is all right.I just haven't gotten around to the series yet. I've spent so much time watching classic horror that I've kind of neglected modern horror.

Five Characters in Search of an Exit is brilliant. I remember watching it and then seeing the ending for the first time. My response was "Holy shit. Rod Serling you beautiful bastard." Still haven't um seen Cube, either.

[Dead & Messed Up]

...what is never recorded in a log is the fear that washes over a deck like fog and ocean spray. Fear like the throbbing strokes of engine pistons, each like a heartbeat, parceling out every hour into breathless minutes of watching, waiting, and dreading.


11. "Judgment Night" / Triangle

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fB-fKqjnTJw/UkmmQ4EXB1I/AAAAAAAACNo/yPT8DE2k9M0/s1600/TwilightZone-13-JudgmentNight.jpg

"Judgment Night" (Wri. Rod Serling, Dir. John Brahm, Season One)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9eJyjxCf4_s/UkmmRE2ezKI/AAAAAAAACN4/8RRTZzti-xk/s1600/TwilightZone-13-Triangle1.jpg

Triangle (Chris Smith, 2009)

What's So Similar?

Both "Judgment Night" and Triangle share a confused hero with a limited memory, an ominous fog-laden boat full of expendable souls, and a sharp twist that doubles back and explains why those heroes might be amnesiac and confused.


What's So Different?

Serling's story is stuck firmly in the post-World-War-II angst that seeps into many Twilight Zone episodes, with its boat a 1942 British warship and its hero (a nervous man named Carl) a war refugee. Smith's film has its spectral ship as a displaced liner named the Aeolus (its namesake the Greek deity of ocean winds), and its hero is Jess (Melissa George), a contemporary single mother who finds the boat by accident. The feature film plays like a logical extension of the Serling short, revealing one big twist relatively early on. Then it builds upon and subverts that twist with a crushing ending.


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6wserjITFss/UkmmRA5jrfI/AAAAAAAACN0/LzbCEokmlqM/s1600/TwilightZone-13-Triangle2.jpg

What's So Special?

Serling's short grants sympathy to a character who might not merit emotional attachment, which gives his eerie little tale an added intrigue. Just who is this man? Why is he on this boat? Why does he feel so out of place? And why does this all seem familiar? Why is it set in 1942, at this point in time? Chris Smith's feature offers many of the same questions, and it communicates some of that discomforting combination of familiarity and alienation. Neither hero remembers why they're here, but they know that they forgot. Melissa George is terrific as the anxious lead, and the twists in the story don't play like gimmicks - every single surprise turns the screws tighter on the heroine's psychology and hold up to scrutiny. I saw Triangle for the first time a year ago, and I'm still thinking about it. Watch it.

[Grouchy]

So far there's not a single instance where I've seen both the film and the episode.

This thread is great, by the way.

[Spun Lepton]

Re: Triangle.

I enjoyed it. I'm curious, though ...

Thoughts on the ending? They showed that the version Jess who shows up at the dock near the beginning/end is an "alternate version" who seems caught in a time loop, forever going back and forth between the ship and land, and the version we see in the 1st act dies before reaching the dock. Please correct me if I'm wrong. My memories of the story are probably a bit affected by inebriation. Anyway, it affected my enjoyment of an otherwise fun ride. Jess stumbling across all those bodies of the same person was quite the moment.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Re: Triangle.

I enjoyed it. I'm curious, though ...

Thoughts on the ending? They showed that the version Jess who shows up at the dock near the beginning/end is an "alternate version" who seems caught in a time loop, forever going back and forth between the ship and land, and the version we see in the 1st act dies before reaching the dock. Please correct me if I'm wrong. My memories of the story are probably a bit affected by inebriation. Anyway, it affected my enjoyment of an otherwise fun ride. Jess stumbling across all those bodies of the same person was quite the moment.

Okay, here's what I took from the film and its ending.

I take the film as having no scenes of reality. Everything you see is a part of this looping unreal universe that Dead-Jess seems to inhabiting, where time is wacky and she's constantly faced with her sins as a mother. The Jess you see early in the film is a representation of who she was before she died, but it's not actually her.

My interpretation was yours - that Jess, when she was alive, never made it to the dock. My theory is that Jess was abusive to her son, had a moment of clarity, tried to drive away before her boat trip, and died. She then "wakes up" in this post-death purgatory, where the taxi driver (who made me think of Charon and the River Styx) offers her the choice of where she wants to go. She chooses to go to the boat, goes through the loop a number of times (including the "killing herself" sequence that takes place off the boat), and we've picked up with the story on the 30th go-round.

The only thing this doesn't explain is why she would choose the boat after her first death. But my speculation is that the taxi driver told her there might be a way to save her son on the boat, therefore pushing her to a cruel punishment for her abusive behavior.

Overthinking it? Maybe.

[megladon8]

Jen and I watched Triangle again last night (because of this thread! :)).

Better than the first viewing for sure, but I still felt it was kind of muddled. Certainly much better than the similarly plotted Timecrimes.


I was left wondering - what was with all the Shining stuff? Was the director trying to say something with all these little winks and nods to Kubrick's film, or was it no more than "man I LOVE that movie!"?

[Dead & Messed Up]

Jen and I watched Triangle again last night (because of this thread! :)).

Better than the first viewing for sure, but I still felt it was kind of muddled. Certainly much better than the similarly plotted Timecrimes.


I was left wondering - what was with all the Shining stuff? Was the director trying to say something with all these little winks and nods to Kubrick's film, or was it no more than "man I LOVE that movie!"?

Which elements? I don't remember too many overt nods, but I'm not quite a disciple of Kubrick's film.

Glad you liked it more this time around!

[megladon8]

Well at the beginning of the movie the camera quite prominently displays that her house number is 237.

Then on the boat, the room in which...

...she kills Downey and writes "Go to theatre" on the mirror in blood...

...is number 237.

Also, when the door opens to that room, the wallpaper is curiously similar to the decor of the Overlook Hotel.

Not to mention that a pivotal scene (the one in the spoilers above) takes place in the bathroom of that room.

And the idea that this ship and the people on it are caught in a time and place separate from the rest of the world. The photo showing the ship decades ago is reminiscent of the final shot of Kubrick's film, showing Jack having now become a part of the Overlook.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Oh, huh. Didn't even notice. I guess the obvious connection is

supernatural space that tests an abusive parent and eventually turns the parent into a sociopath.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Imagine a time in the future when science has developed the means of giving everybody the face and body he dreams of. It may not happen tomorrow, but it happens now in the Twilight Zone.


10. "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You" / The Stepford Wives

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-n4aNo_a2isI/UlzAfP--JBI/AAAAAAAACQ4/9FEm2Te6feI/s1600/TwilightZone-10-Number12.jpg

"Number Twelve..." (Wri. John Tomerlin, Dir. Abner Biberman, Season Five)
Watch It on Hulu (http://www.hulu.com/watch/440754)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FVH37dX0SXI/UlzAfYrVJ5I/AAAAAAAACRE/om9dK8u5NR4/s1600/TwilightZone-10-Stepford1.jpg

The Stepford Wives (Bryan Forbes, 1975)

What's So Similar?

Boy, would you look at these women? They're all so beautiful, they're all so happy, they're all so... bland. In "Number 12 Looks Just Like You," the government pushes all persons to go through a transformation that will make them into a specific model of beauty. The women end up with the personality of a real-doll. In Stepford, the patriarchs of a small town replace the ladies with robots that smooth over pesky problems like independent thought and resistance. In both cases, beautiful, agreeable women are rolled off the assembly line.


What's So Different?

Although the Zone episode is undeniably feminist - nearly all its characters are females and its chief criticism remains the superficiality of the cheery pin-up girl - it makes a token effort at equality by requiring men to go through the same process, and it diverts on occasion to make points about a totalitarian state. The Stepford Wives's take on regimented beauty and docility has more focus, wasting no time on developing the men (all pretty much awful) and society (a simple riff on Rockwell's America). In some ways, the original novel by Ira Levin is a more obvious reworking of her previous novel, Rosemary's Baby, which also had a woman fighting the social pressure to be an agreeable wife and mother. Ultimately, the biggest difference here is that the men of Stepford doesn't revise the women they have; instead, they start from scratch.


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ppp2tgtt7Q4/UlzAfXB1ISI/AAAAAAAACRI/t91RcJlA-cI/s1600/TwilightZone-10-Stepford2.jpg

What's So Special?

The Zone episode borrows heavily from popular episodes like "The Eye of the Beholder" and "The Obsolete Man," but The Twilight Zone always focused more on men, so an episode devoted almost entirely to women struggling with body image and correct "female" behavior makes for a much-needed break. Collin Wilcox of To Kill a Mockingbird impresses as the curious "plain Jane" lead, and plastic, smiling blonde women are always creepy (trust me - I live in LA). This is the big reason The Stepford Wives still works, even though it's essentially a dark comedy with the occasional suspense breaks (what's happening up those stairs?). Its similarities to "Number 12" may need to be teased out, but its overall motive - unpacking the American small town to illustrate an important social point - is vintage Twilight Zone.

[MadMan]

I didn't care for The Stepford Wives when I saw it on TCM back in 2008. Maybe a rewatch would change my mind. As it stands I was unimpressed although I liked the ending, I guess.

[Dukefrukem]

This write up is great. I haven't seen any of these horror movies with the exception of Final Destination. :-/

I have had the Twilight Zone complete Blu-ray collection in my Amazon shopping cart for what seems like forever.

[Winston*]

Well at the beginning of the movie the camera quite prominently displays that her house number is 237.

Then on the boat, the room in which...

...she kills Downey and writes "Go to theatre" on the mirror in blood...

...is number 237.

Also, when the door opens to that room, the wallpaper is curiously similar to the decor of the Overlook Hotel.

Not to mention that a pivotal scene (the one in the spoilers above) takes place in the bathroom of that room.

And the idea that this ship and the people on it are caught in a time and place separate from the rest of the world. The photo showing the ship decades ago is reminiscent of the final shot of Kubrick's film, showing Jack having now become a part of the Overlook.

There's also a scene where we discover a single sentence rewritten a bunch of times. And a bit with an axe.

Just watched this movie because of this thread. Pretty cool, though still left me with the kind of niggling feeling that these kinds of films tend to.

Main thing I don't understand is with the seeming Sisyphean reset at the end, where the cut faced version who stabs the couple in the cabin comes into it.

[Dead & Messed Up]

My original plan for the Halloween season was to cover, in rigorous and riveting detail, the thirteen "best" Twilight Zone movies. I got through the first four, and then life things happened. Positive life things, but things that required my full attention and full time. What follows is an abridged version of those Halloween entries


9. "Mirror Image" / Doppelganger
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lPhbOPsiJkY/Uo2LoD1objI/AAAAAAAACRs/p2_WhhJDeXA/s1600/TwilightZone-9-DoppelgangerMirrorImage.jpg
A creepy-ass episode with Vera Miles as an anxious woman who's seeing too much of herself holds much in common with a Japanese movie called Doppelganger. In that film, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the doppelganger isn't just unreal and invasive; he's also better at life than the original. The movie isn't as straightforward as the episode. Instead, Doppelganger guns for a sardonic edge; call it deathpan.


8. "The Invaders" / Trilogy of Terror
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ws-RBXPqlUQ/Uo2qig820eI/AAAAAAAACTQ/mRxijuxJ7IE/s1600/TwilightZone-TrilogyofTerrorInvaders.jpg
This one's a bit of a cheat, since Trilogy was a TV movie. But whatever. Sometimes I break rules. [adjusts shades]. Trilogy, an anthology horror films composed of three segments, has a famous finale involving an evil little scamp called a "Zuni Fetish Doll." The terror-from-below recalls the excellent miniature terror of "The Invaders," with Agnes Moorehead as a mute woman fending off tinny little space invaders.


7. "Perchance to Dream" / A Nightmare on Elm Street
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ntnRY95JG9k/Uo2PStN2pFI/AAAAAAAACSA/0lg2hoQYqxs/s1600/TwilightZone-NightmareonElmStreetPerchancet oDream.jpg
On Elm Street and in the Twilight Zone, there's a lurking nightmare that can literally scare you to death. A Nightmare on Elm Street amps up the gore and makes its villain a scarred monster with knives for fingers, which sets it a ways apart from the subtler nature of the Zone, where a man is "chased down" by a mysterious female who's both alluring and deadly. Is he crazy? Who could ever know?


6. "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" / The Mist
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oGkHdmUjlFs/Uo2MZ7z2UAI/AAAAAAAACR0/DWl-azfKRrA/s1600/TwilightZone-TheMistMapleStreet.jpg
The Zone episode is a masterpiece of fear and mistrust, a compact fable about how quickly civilization can self-destruct. All that story required was the loss of electricity to get the scape-goating started. Stephen King's novella-turned-film adds a healthy number of extradimensional monsters, but the story retains the core terror of Serling's classic: introduce enough panic, and society is almost excited to self-destruct.


5. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" / Jacob's Ladder
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fQ5JnKLlBoo/Uo2eyI28JxI/AAAAAAAACTA/JOOFaV6c0Lg/s1600/TwilightZone-JacobsLadderOccurrence.jpg
If you've seen neither, watch them both. If you've seen both, you know what I'm talking about. If you've seen one but not the other, I'm sorry for spoiling the fun.


4. "Little Girl Lost" / Poltergeist
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vw4LK9TsiZM/Uo2U0iW2ISI/AAAAAAAACSY/2jQQZFvWfuM/s1600/TwilightZone-LittleGirlLostPoltergeist.jpg
Poltergeist is probably the best film that cribs from The Twilight Zone. Both the film and "Little Girl Lost" trap a girl in the walls of her suburban home. Both stories also feature ticking clocks, convenient "experts," and the feeling that our world carries dimensions we can't begin to understand. While Hooper's film also turns into a horror revue (clowns! skeletons! demons!), it never loses the anxiety of a family trying to reunite.


3. "The Dummy" / Magic
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aQto90jPe4U/Uo2ZxhWz1EI/AAAAAAAACSw/R7jnHOM3hPw/s1600/TwilightZone-DummyMagic.jpg
I saw Magic for the first time this year, and I immediately thought of Twilight Zone's "The Dummy." Magic (directed by Richard Attenborough) generates Hitchcock-style suspense with its pitiable hero accused of murder, but the overall idea of a ventriloquist and his puppet honors the uncanny eeriness of "The Dummy." Want more creepy puppet action? Check out 1945's Dead of Night and 1989's Pin.


2. "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" /
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DXG5H3c6L58/Uo2Q_nZWT2I/AAAAAAAACSM/9aXbeCyNtKw/s1600/TwilightZone-InvasionRealMartian.jpg
Here's another cheat, since Invasion of the Body Snatchers came out years before Serling's tale of alien paranoia, but the film - an improvement on the Jack Finney source material - feels like a sort of precognitive echo of Serling. With its depiction of Rockwell's America upended by imposters who look just like us, Body Snatchers understands - like Serling - that the illusion of peace can be more intimidating than any violence.


1. "The Hitchhiker" / Carnival of Souls
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vOE8rixPh2Y/Uo2Xy2OySkI/AAAAAAAACSk/rV3i6Xu9f_M/s1600/TwilightZone-HitchhikerCarnivalofSouls.jpg
Herk Harvey's one-off B-movie chiller is one of the best horror flicks of the 1960's; it's one of those movies where the amateurish qualities - the hitchy soundtrack, the B-level acting - add to the atmosphere. The film's familiar in spirit to one of the first Zone episodes, "The Hitch-hiker," where a nervous woman's pursued by a man who's seemingly supernatural. Most of the films on this expand on their Serling-esque conceits with extra spectacle and additional twists. Carnival is the only one that matches The Twilight Zone for pure simplicity. Above all, this is a mood piece, a dreamlike film with a sad twist. Serling would have approved.

[MadMan]

Fantastic sir.