Twilight Zone Companion (43 page)

In a way, it can be said that Walter Ryder succeeded in his lifes ambition, even though the man he created was, after all, himself There may be easier ways to self-improvement, but sometimes it happens that the shortest distance between two points is a crooked linethrough the Twilight Zone.

Charles Beaumonts In His Image (based on the short story included in his collection Yonder) begins with youthful Alan Talbot (George Grizzard) pushing an old woman into the path of a speeding subway trainto the accompaniment of bizarre electronic noises in his head then, only minutes later, cheerfully meeting with his fiancee. (Jay Fredericks, in his review of the episode in the Charleston, West Virginia, Gazette-Mail, jokingly noted that when the weird noises started, I thought the Martians were arriving by subway.) Alan Talbot discovers what he is made of

When the short story first appeared in the February, 1957, issue of Imagination (under the title The Man Who Made Himself), the main characters name was Pete Nolan, after Beaumonts friend William F. Nolan. But Beaumont, sensitive to the fact that Nolan might not like having a murderous robot with his last name plastered across the television screens of America, changed it when he wrote the script. Very possibly, the name Talbot came from another character with a dreadful inner secret Lawrence Talbot, better known as The Wolf Man.

In this episode, Beaumonts writing is some of his most thoughtful since Long Live Walter Jameson. Particularly effective is a scene near the end, in which Alan confronts his creator, Walter Ryder. Here, Grizzard plays a dual role far removed from his part in The Chaser. It is a tour de force of writing, directing and acting, for although Grizzard plays both Alan and Walter the illusion that this is a scene between two separate men is perfect. Grizzard presents two completely distinct characters. Alan warm, intelligent and personable (if you can excuse the occasional lapses into psychosis); and Walter bitter, lonely, full of self-loathing. The split screen when the two are talking to each other is indiscernable, and the double for Grizzard when either Walter or Alan is seen from the back (played by Joseph Sargent, later to turn director and do such films as The Forbin Project and The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three) looks exactly like Grizzard from the back. Alan asks Walter the all-important question:

alan: Who am I?

Walter: Youre nobody, Alan, nobody at all.

alan (Angrily): Stop it, Walter!

Walter: Well, who is this watch Im wearing, ask me that. Who is the refrigerator in the kitchen?

Dont you understand?

alan: No.

Walter: Youre a machine, Alan, a mechanical device.

alan: I dont believe it!

Walter: I dont blame you, I wouldnt believe it either,

* but its true. The fact is, you were born a long time ago, in my head. All kids have dreams, dont they? Well, you were mine. The others thought about joining the army or flying to Mars, and they finally grew up and forgot their dreams. I didnt. I thought about one thing and longed for one thing always. Just one. A perfect artificial man. Not a robot. A duplicate of a human being. Well, it was harmless, not even very imaginative for a child. But then I became an adult, only somewhere along the way I forgot to grow uplike most geniuses. I kept my dream. I created you, Alan, is that straight enough for you?

The finale that Beaumont provides is a happy one: the killer robot is destroyed; Walter, by impersonating his own creation, finds an escape from loneliness; and Jessica gets the man she lovesor, at least, someone mighty close. Beaumont tries to keep this a last-minute cliff-hanger by having Alan and Walter grapple in a fight to the death, so that when one of them subsequently knocks at Jessicas door, we are kept in suspense as to which it really is. But it isnt really much of a surprise. In order to present the alternative endingan innocent young woman being left to the mercies of a clockwork maniac Twilight Zone itself would have to have been demented. This does not matter, though. In His Image is exciting, suspenseful and thought-provoking. If this was to be a representative example of the hour-long shows, the series had nothing to worry about.

Unfortunately, such was not the case.

THE THIRTY-FATHOM GRAVE (1/10/63)

Written by Rod Serling

Producer: Herbert Hirschman

Director: Perry Lafferty

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

Music: stock

Cast: Chief Bell: Mike Kellin Capt. Beecham: Simon Oakland Doc: David Sheiner McClure: John Considine O.O.D.: Bill Bixby Lee Helmsman: Tony Call Helmsman: Derrick Lewis Ensign Marmer: Conlan Carter Sonar Operator: Charles Kuenstle ASW Officer: Forrest Compton Jr. O.O.D.: Henry Scott Sailor #1: Vince Bagetta Sailor #2: Louie Elias

Incident one hundred miles off the coast of Guadalcanal. Time: the present. The United States naval destroyer on what has been a most uneventful cruise. In a moment, they’re going to send a man down thirty fathoms to check on a noise maker someone or some thing tapping on metal. You may or may not read the results in a naval report, because Captain Beecham and his crew have just set a course that will lead this ship and everyone on it into the Twilight Zone.”

Onboard the destroyer, sonar picks up a sunken submarine on the ocean floor and a persistent clanging coming from within the sub! One sailor jokingly says its ghosts, a suggestion that causes Chief Bella man seemingly on the verge of a nervous breakdown to faint. Diver McClure is sent down to investigate. He finds the sub considerably damaged, with evidence of having been strafed. Although it is of American design, the numbers on it are inaccessible. McClure taps on the outside and gets a tapping response from within: someone definitely seems to be inside. And yet no subs are listed as being in that area. Later, the sub shifts slightly and its numbers become legible; it is an American sub, sunk by the Japanese on August 7, 1942over twenty years agol Meanwhile, in sick bay, Chief Bell feels some mysterious force beckoning to him. Looking in the mirror and down the corridor, he sees the ghosts of young seamen, their clothes drenched, motioning for him to join them. The doctor dismisses this as an

hallucination, but he has no explanation for the seaweed he finds in the corridor! Then McClure discovers something beside the sub: dogtags with Chief Bells name on them. Bell confesses to Captain Beecham that he was assigned as a signalman on the sub during World War II, and that it was sunk because he accidentally dropped a signal lamp, knocking off its red filter and exposing light to the enemy. He alone survived and now, burdened by tremendous guilt, he feels that the ghosts of his crewmates are calling muster on him. Beecham argues that the sub was surrounded; it wasnt Bells fault. Bell doesnt seem to hear. Hysterical, he slips the dogtags on, rushes from the room, runs to the side of the ship, dives overboard and drowns. Later, a team of divers enters the sub. McClure reports to the captain that a sheared section of periscope was swinging, and that, no doubt, accounted for the sounds. Very probably, but then what about the disquieting fact that one of the dead men had a hammer in his hand … ?

Small naval engagement, the month of April, 1963. Not to be found in any historical annals. Look for this one filed under H for hauntingin the Twilight Zone

Executed as a half-hour show, The Thirty-Fathom Grave might have been effectively eerie, in the tradition of Judgment Night, but at an hour it is impossibly padded. Rather than having the story develop at a normal pace, each new piece of information is revealed with all the urgency of sap dripping from a tree. Having divers investigate the sub once would suffice dramatically; here they go down three separate times. The writing borders on self-parody, as in this snatch of dialogue between the destroyers captain (Simon Oakland) and the officer of the day (Bill Bixby):

o.o.d. (.Reacting to the clanking sound coming over the speaker from the sonar shack): Its wild.

captain: That it is, Lieutenant.

o.o.d.: But if it isnt a sub, sir, what is it?

captain: Maybe its a Spanish galleon with a treasure chest and a loose lid thats off its hinges. (Meaningfully) Or maybe itsmaybe its just our imaginations.

And later, when they discover that the ship was sunk in 1942:

officer: Well, that was twenty years ago! Captain

Beecham, whos down there? Whos inside that sub?

captain: Somebody who dies damn hard.

As the spooked bosuns mate, Mike Kellin (later to get an Oscar nomination for his role as the father in the movie Midnight Express) gives a convincing performance, as does Simon Oakland. But their efforts are in vain. As Variety noted in its review of the episode (regrettably drawing conclusions about the series as a whole), In a show where the imagination has been given freedom to run riot, it has chosen to plod along a well-marked groove.

MUTE (1/31/63)

Written by Richard Matheson

Producer: Herbert Hirschman

Director: Stuart Rosenberg

Director of Photography:Robert W. Pittack

Music: Fred Steiner

Cast: Ilse Nielsen: Ann Jillian Harry Wheeler: Frank Overton Cora Wheeler: Barbara Baxley Miss Frank: Irene Dailey Prof. Karl Werner: Oscar Beregi Frau Nielsen: Claudia Bryer Holger Nielsen: Robert Boon Frau Maria Werner: Eva Soreny Tom Poulter: Percy Helton

wnat you re witnessing is me curtain-raiser to a most extraordinary play; to wit, the signing of a pact, the commencement of a project. The play itself will be performed almost entirely offstage. The final scenes are to be enacted a decade hence and with a different cast. The main character of these final scenes is Ilse, the daughter of Professor and Mrs. Nielsen, age two. At the moment she lies sleeping in her crib, unaware of the singular drama in which she is to be involved. Ten years from this moment, Ilse Nielsen is to know the desolating terror of living simultaneously in the world and in the Twilight Zone.

In Germany in 1953, a group of people pledge that, in order to develop their mental powers, they and their children will communicate solely through telepathy. The Nielsen family then moves to German Corners, Pennsylvania. Ten years later, their house burns down. Prof. Nielsen and his wife are killed; their last act: to telepathically warn their daughter Ilse, who escapes unharmed. Sheriff Harry Wheeler and his wife take Ilse in, but they are appalled to find she cannot speak, read or write the result, they assume, of maltreatment by her reclusive parents. Ilse, a highly-developed telepath, can read the thoughts of those around her, but their speech is a hopeless garble. She is marooned, with no way to communicate. Cora, whose own daughter drowned, is determined to keep Ilse. When Harry writes letters about Ilse to a German address found amongst Prof. Nielsens papers, Cora surreptitiously destroys them. Wanting Ilse to learn to talk, Harry sends her to a class taught by Miss Frank, who tries to get Ilse to say her own name by having the entire class repeat it in unison. When this fails, she realizes that Ilse can read her thoughts. Miss Franks father had tried to make her into a medium when she was a child; she assumes this has happened to Ilse, too. Over a period of days, Miss Frank has her class think Ilses name which Ilse finds deafening. Meanwhile, Prof. Werner and his wife arrive in town from Germany, concerned that they have not heard from the Nielsens in months. At the Wheeler house, they discover that Miss Franks methods have destroyed Ilses telepathic ability; their thoughts are a painful jumble to her. Hysterically, she cries out, My name is Ilse! again and again. Cora tells the Werners that she loves Ilse and wont let them take her. Realizing that Ilse would now be an outcast in a community of telepaths, the Werners let the Wheelers keep her. But Frau Werner tells her husband it is no tragedy; Ilses real parents saw her only as an experiment. But now she will be loved.

It has been noted in a book of proven wisdom that perfect love casteth out fear. While ifs unlikely that this observation was meant to include that specific fear which follows the loss of extrasensory perception, the principle remains, as always, beautifully intact. Case in point, that of Ilse Nielsen, former resident of the Twilight Zone.

In 1962, Richard Matheson wrote a novelette entitled Mute. Initially, it was published in The Fiend in You, edited by Charles Beaumont, then subsequently in Mathesons Shock II (Dell, 1964). The story concerns a telepathic boy who, following the death of his parents, must contend with well-meaning adults who mistake his silence for traumatized muteness.

Matheson adapted the story for Twilight Zone, retaining the basic story but changing the gender of the child. What emerged was an episode that was crushingly pro-conformity.

What is so disturbingparticularly to anyone who believes that talent and individuality are sacred itemsis the manner in which the story evolves. With the exception of the child herself (Ann Jillian, years later to play a sexpot on TVs Ifs A Living), virtually all of the main characters are either brutishly insensitive or cruelly neurotic. As Sheriff Harry Wheeler, Frank Overton exhibits none of the warmth and perceptiveness he showed as the father in Walking Distance; instead, he is cool and undemonstrative. His wife Cora is a selfish, hysterical woman who professes to love Ilse but is actually maniacally intent on keeping possession of a child she irrationally feels is her own daughter returned to her. Then there is Miss Frank (Irene Dailey), the schoolteacher. She spells her character out clearly to her class when she says of Ilse, We are going to work with her until shes exactly like everybody else. In the end, when Ilse is traumatized into screaming My name is Ilse! over and over again, it is a triumph of sadistic and misguided teaching methods.

Paradoxically, this is treated as a happy ending. And to allay any suspicions that what we have been watching is actually a tragedy, Matheson provides a final scene involving the German couple who were participants in the original telepathy experiment. Having come with the intention of taking Ilse to join others of her kind, they change their minds when they see that now, although she has lost her telepathic ability, she has gained love (and that is so much more important than telepathy). This convenient reverse is neither satisfying nor convincing.