There were many fascinating, provocative episodes on The Twilight Zone television series that aired from 1959 to 1964 and it was great entertainment for the entire family. I was fortunate enough to grow up in that era, but this show is still very popular on reruns.
In my article, 5 Twilight Zone Episodes with Powerful Messages, I went over some of the features that carried morals applicable to our lives today. Now, we will take a look at 5 that are the most chilling and captivating.
1. Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
This episode is one that sticks in the mind. William Shatner plays a stressed out businessman who is apparently experiencing delusional states of mind. When he goes on an airplane flight with his wife, he keeps seeing a monster on the wing of the plane that is doing damage to aircraft. Whenever he tries to point it out to others, however, the monster disappears and people believe he’s insane. At the end of the feature, there is evidence that the creature is real, even though Shatner is hauled away on a stretcher.
2. The Odyssey of Flight 33
A plane is flying from London to New York. When making the approach for landing, the captain suddenly notices strange, disturbing vibrations. Suddenly, radio communication to the ground is lost. Because they’re low on fuel, they decide to land. As they go down and look out the window, a prehistoric view of New York appears, and then dinosaurs can be seen roaming the landscape because the plane had traveled back in time.
They try reaccelerating, but are only able to travel back to 1939 and they see the World’s Fair of that year when they look out the window again and were unable to land. They became lost in the Twilight Zone and viewers are advised that when they hear the sound of jet engines, it might be Flight Global 33.
Wikipedia provides a great synopsis of this story:
The story begins with a woman, Nan Adams, who has been in a car accident on a cross-country road trip from New York to Los Angeles. A mechanic puts a spare tire on her car, and then leads her to the nearest town to fix it properly. Just before she leaves, she notices a strange-looking man hitchhiking. Unnerved, she drives away quickly. As it turns out, this is the first of many times that she will see the same man, always hitch-hiking and wanting her to pick him up. She becomes increasingly frightened of him, and when she is stuck on a railroad crossing and nearly hit by a train, she becomes convinced that the hitch-hiker is trying to kill her. She continues to drive, becoming more and more afraid, stopping only when necessary; but every time she does, the man is there.
When she ends up stranded in New Mexico, she meets a different man, a sailor on his way back from his leave and returning to his ship in San Diego. Eager for protection from the hitch-hiker she’s been seeing, she offers to drive the sailor to San Diego herself. However, she is still paranoid about the hitch-hiker, and when she sees him on the road and tries to run him over, the sailor, who can’t see him, begins to fear for her sanity and leaves her. In Arizona, Nan stops to call her mother. However, the woman who answers the phone, Mrs. Whitney, says that Mrs. Adams is in the hospital: She had a nervous breakdown after finding out that her daughter, Nan, was killed in an auto accident in Pennsylvania six days ago, when the car she was driving blew a tire and overturned. At this point, Nan realizes the truth: The hitch-hiker is not a man who wants her to die, but rather, the personification of death itself, just patiently and persistently waiting for her to realize that she has been dead all along.
‘I believe you’re going…my way?’ he inquires from the back seat, almost friendly.”
4. Twenty-Two
This has to be the most captivating and scary episode, in my opinion. A lady in a hospital has recurring nightmares about room number 22, which happens to be the morgue. In her dream, she is always greeted by a nurse, who says, “Room for one more, honey.” The woman awakens from her dream screaming, and she is calmed and reassured by the hospital staff. When she leaves the hospital, however, the doctors wonder how she could have known the morgue was indeed Room 22.
The woman is then seen boarding her plane on Ramp 22. When she goes up the steps to the entrance of plane, she is greeted by the flight attendant who is the same woman at the morgue in her dream. The stewardess says, “Room for one more, honey,” and then the woman runs back into the airport shrieking in terror. The plane is then shown taking off and bursting into flames.
5. Night Call
An elderly woman named Elva keeps getting mysterious phone calls at night, and all she can hear is static, following by moaning and a faint, unclear voice. The caller finally asks the woman where she is and says he wants to talk to her.
The calls finally cease and Wikipedia describes the conclusion: “Elva and her housekeeper visit the location of the line given by the telephone operator. To the astonishment of both, they find themselves at a cemetery, and they find that the line is resting on the grave of Elva’s long-deceased fiancé, Brian Douglas. Elva says that she always insisted upon having her own way, and Brian always did what she said. A week before they were to be married, she insisted upon driving, and lost control of the car. The accident left Brian dead, and she, a lonely cripple. Now she can talk to him again, she won’t have to be alone.
At home, she picks up the phone and calls out to Brian. She pleads with him to answer so that she can talk to him. He replies that she has told him to leave her alone, and that he always does what she says. Then the line goes dead, leaving Elva alone and crying in her bed.”
I recommend The Twilight Zone as a great program for today. There are a vast number of reruns that appear on TV and there is a great selection of DVD sets.
