Twilight Zone Companion (45 page)

Richard Mathesons short story Death Ship first appeared in the March, 1953, issue of Fantastic Story Magazine. Later it was included in his collection Shock! (Dell, 1961). In it, a three-man spaceship crew sights something glinting on the surface of an unexplored planet. Going down to investigate, they find the wreckage of a ship identical in design to their own and, inside it, dead duplicates of their own bodies. Eventually, the realization dawns on these men that they are ghosts. The story is short, precise and effective.In making the adaptation for Twilight Zone, Matheson had to expand it considerably. But rather than bloating the story, the greater length allowed him to add complexity to the plot, flesh out the characters and introduce scenes that vastly enhance the drama. Death Ship is a fine melding of the science fiction and horror genres, and it touches on many fears: fear of the unknown, fear of loss, fear of death. The old dark house is turned into the ruined, dark spaceship and the monsters lurking within are the astronauts own corpses. In a way, these dead bodies are the most dreadful of all threats; a confrontation with an anonymous horror offers the possibility of deathbut the discovery of your own lifeless form guarantees it.

Directed by Don Medford (A Passage for Trumpet, Deaths-head Revisited), Death Ship is filled with what might be called emotional violence, and flashes with the sparks that fly when three men are in bitter conflict, two aching to slide gently into death, the other holding them back, in defiance of reality. The balance of temperaments is excellent: Jack Klugman as the bullheaded Captain Ross, Ross Martin as the intellectual and melancholy Lieutenant Mason, and Fredrick Beir as the young, enthusiastic Lieutenant Carter.

Included in Death Ship are a number of visually impressive futuristic props, including the spaceship itself (a leftover from the movie Forbidden Planet) and an on-bridge device that scans the planets surface. Realistic paintings depict the wrecked spaceship and the exterior of a house back on Earth. Also worth noting are the day and night shots of the spaceship landing and taking off. The MGM special-effects department did this, Herbert Hirschman recalls. I supervised the construction and told them what I wanted. We built a miniature to show the ship landing and taking off. It was on a table with sand and little plants. The ship was suspended from invisible wires. And as the ship was slowing in the descent, I wanted to see the sand billowing up. It was very expensive, but I felt that it was essential to the credibility of the show. The attention to detail was well worth the effort; its a beautiful effect. It was an awful lot of fun, says Hirschman, I kept asking for more and they kept doing it.

Perhaps the episodes finest scene and one of Twilight Zone’s most powerful emotional moments occurs when Ross Martin, having gone to sleep in the ship, wakes to find himself apparently back on Earth, resting on the shore of a quiet lake. Out of the bushes, his daughter (Tammy Marihugh) appears, laughingly calling, Oh Daddy, I thought Id never find you! Tears roll down Martins face. His expression is one of elation and wonderment, suffused with an intensity of longing. It is clear from his reaction that the little girl must be dead; only such a reunion could bring so powerful and immediate a reaction. It is a magnificent, eloquent, unspoken moment.

At the time, Martin was separated from his own daughter, who was with his first wife in New York. In 1979, he recalled how he prepared for this scene. I had found that certain personal things with regard to my own daughter motivate me or drive me or move me. Years ago, I was in a class taught by Marty Ritt, who is now a brilliant director, and one of the exercises we had was to move a distance of something like eighteen feet in three steps and sit in a chair. I mean, just move, three steps and youre sitting in the chair. And I said, Tt just cant be done. He said, You give yourself something thatll make you do that.

So I pictured my daughter under certain circumstances. Now, its horrible to me even now, as I mention it but the truth is that I pictured her at a window, inside a burning building, calling to me in near panic, Daddy! Daddy! And I took those steps! It was effortless to stride the length of a mans body. It was almost as though I had been shot out of a cannon, but that was because that was meaningful to me. And I used similar circumstances involving my own daughter, in my mind, in preparation for that scene, so that when I turned and saw her my heart just broke. The joy, the joy at seeing her! Written by Charles Beaumont Producer: Herbert Hirschman Director: Perry Lafferty Director of Photography:

Valley of the Shadow

Written by Charles Beaumont Producer:

Herbert Hirschman

Director: Perry Lafferty

Director of Photography: Robert W. Pittack

Music: stock

Robert W. Pittack

Music: stock

Cast: Philip Redfield: Ed Nelson Ellen Marshall: Natalie Irundy Dorn: David Opatoshu Father: James Doohan Girl: Suzanne Cupito Evans: Dabbs Greer Connelly: Jacques Aubuchon Gas Attendent: Sandy Kenyon Man #1: Henry Beckman Man #2: Bart Burns Man #3: King Calder Man #4: Pat OHara

Youve seen them. Little towns, tucked away far from the main roads. Youve seen them, but have you thought about them? What do the people in these places do? Why do they stay? Phillip Redfield never thought about them. If his dog hadnt gone after that cat, he would have driven through Peaceful Valley and put it out of his mind forever. But he cant do that now, because whether he knows it or not his friends shortcut has led him right into the capital of the Twilight Zone.

Lost and nearly out of gas, reporter Philip Redfield pulls into Peaceful Valley, a small town that seems quite common place until his dog gives chase to a cat and a little girl uses a bizarre gizmo to make the hound disappear. The childs father returns the dog, claiming it simply ran around the side of the house, but Redfield is not convinced. Stopping at the local hotel to get his dog a steak, he makes the acquaintance of Ellen Marshall, an attractive town resident. Disturbingly, Redfield finds that the hotel has no guests and that the most recent paper dates from 1953. Ellen tries to convince him that the hotel is full, then asks him to leave town. Angrily, Redfield departsand drives smack into an invisible wall that wrecks his car and kills his dog. A number of townspeople come to his aid and, once he is out of sight, one of them uses a device to bring the dog back to life. Redfield is taken to the town chambers, where he meets Dorn, Evans and Connelly, three men who tell him he is never going to leave Peaceful Valley. Redfield tries to escape, but Dorn uses a device to

teleport him from the doorway to a chair. He then explains that, one hundred years earlier, a strangerwho may or may not have been from outer spacearrived in town. He brought with him the equations for a miraculous new energy source, along with a number of devices made possible by these equations, including the force field that stopped Redfield from leaving, instruments to move matter and reshape it, even devices to reverse the flow of time. The people of Peaceful Valley are free to use these for their benefit, but forbidden to reveal them to the outside world until such time as the Earth is at peace. Redfield argues that the townspeople have a moral responsibility to share their secrets, but they wont hear of it. They give him two choices: stay in Peaceful Valley … or die. Naturally, Redfield elects to stay. Kept prisoner in a house by a force field, he pleads with Ellenwho has fallen in love with himto help him escape. Later, he finds the force field down and Ellen waiting for him in his car. Redfield rushes to the town chambers, removes the contents of the safe where the equations are supposedly stored, uses a machine to create a .38 pistol, and shoots Dorn, Evans and Connelly when they try to stop him. Once theyre outside the town, Ellen tells Redfield to look at the papers hes taken. The pages are all blank. She teleports him back to the town chambers, where Dorn, Evans and Connelly are waiting. It was all a testand Redfield has failed. The men aim a device at him, and he finds himself back in his car. The time is just prior to the moment Redfields dog jumped out to chase the fateful cat, and he retains no memory of the experiences hes had in Peaceful Valley. From a distance, Ellen watches him as he drives out of town.

You’ve seen them. Little towns, tucked away far from the main roads. You’ve seen them, but have you thought about them? Have you wondered what the people do in such places, why they stay? Philip Redfield thinks about them now and he wonders, but only very late at night, when he’s between wakefulness and sleepin the Twilight Zone.”

Charles Beaumonts Valley of the Shadow presents an anonymous-looking town that proves to be anything but mundane. Philip Redfield learns that Peaceful Valley has any number of wonderful machines, including an instrument that can create anything out of thin air (even a ham sandwich) and others that can reverse time and bring the dead back to life. (This last bit of scientific magic is demonstrated in a way thats a little hard to swallow: a member of the town council calmly allows himself to be stabbed in the chest with a letter opener. Now, speaking realistically, even if you knew the effects were not going to be permanent, would you let someone stab you in the chest?)

Most of the effects in the episode were accomplished easily, by reversing the footage so that blood seems to flow backward and disappear, or by jump-cutting from a shot of a person standing in the middle of a room to a shot of the exact same scene minus the person, giving the illusion that the person has been teleported. But director Perry Lafferty recalls an effect that wasnt quite so simple: The script required us to create the illusion of an automobile driving down a country road and hitting an invisible wall, causing the car to be more or less demolished. We got a very effective sequence out of it by buying two old identical cars and wrecking the front of one of them. Through a series of cuts, the car was made to appear to slam into the unseen obstruction. The critical portion of the sequence was achieved by putting a one-inch chain around the back axle and running it with about twenty feet of slack, to a steady nearby tree where it was tied off. By framing a portion of the road, a stunt man drove the car into the frame of the camera and, when the slack was used up, was slammed against the steering wheel. The camera was undercranked, thereby giving the impression of considerably more speed than the 12 mph the car was travelling. We then put the leading actor in the car and made a quick cut of him going forward precisely when the car hit the wall. We then switched the good car for the identical wrecked one and made another angle head on to the car showing the front end pushed in. The only thing humorous about this whole episode, and it is slightly grisly, is that the professional stunt man hired to do the gag went into the steering wheel so hard (even at 10 or 12 mph) that we had to call an ambulance and cart him off to the hospital.

Although Valley of the Shadow is entertaining, the story is so lacking in nuance and background detail that it never totally involves the viewer. We are told that Peaceful Valley is a town whose inhabitants live rich, full lives, but we are never shown how they do live. We see less than a dozen of the 981 people, and none in their normal, day-to-day routines. The characters are cardboard through and through, and while this does not ruin the story, it does tend to make it more theoretical than dramatic.

Another problem is that some of the twists and turns of plot are a little hard to follow, especially in the ending. Redfield is told he is to be executed but is instead simply sent back in time, to the point prior to when his dog jumped out of the car. But the dog doesnt jump this time, and so Redfield never learns about this secretive town. Apparently, this final twist lost a number of people, including Fran Conklin of the Orlando, Florida, Sentinel, who wrote, We have just struggled and suffered in silence through sixty minutes (including commercials) of Twilight Zone only to learn that the strange happenings were but the daydreams of the newspaperman involved.

HES ALIVE (1/24/63)

Written by Rod Serling

Producer: Herbert Hirschman

Director: Stuart Rosenberg

Director of Photography: George T. Clemens

Music: stock

Cast: Peter Vollmer: Dennis Hopper Ernst Ganz: Ludwig Donath Adolf Hitler: Curt Conway Frank: Paul Mazursky Nick: Howard Caine Stanley: Barnaby Hale Heckler: Bernard Fein Gibbons: Jay Adler Proprietor: Wolfe Brazell

Portrait of a bush-league fuehrer named Peter Vollmer; a sparse little man who feeds off his self-delusions and finds himself perpetually hungry for want of greatness in his diet. And like some goose-stepping predecessors he searches for something to explain his hunger; and to rationalize why a world passes him by without saluting. That something he looks for and finds is in a sewer. In his own twisted and distorted lexicon he calls it faith, strength, truth. But in just a moment Peter Vollmer will ply his trade on another kind of comer, a strange intersection in a shadowland called the Twilight Zone.”

Vollmer, the leader of a small band of American neo-nazis, wants power but all his racist, streetcorner speeches net him are verbal abuse and fistfights. After one such speech, he seeks solace from Ernst Ganz, an elderly concentration camp survivor who has known him since he was an abused child and who has been like a father to him. Although Ernst despises Peters views, he takes pity on him and lets him stay the night. Later, however, Peter is awakened by someone outside his window, a man who says he shares his philosophy and wants to help him. Staying in the shadows, he advises Peter on how to sway a crowd and win it over. Peter quickly adapts; soon, his speeches are filling a hall. His shadowy benefactor reappears, supplying money with which to pay the rent on the hall and offering new and shocking advice: the movement now needs a martyr. Peter complies; he orders Frank, a loyal deputy, to murder Nick, a devoted but stupid follower. The deed is doneand Peters audience grows. Dismayed by this turn of events, Ernst interrupts one of Peters speeches and denounces him. Peter pleads with him to stop; when Ernst refuses, he slaps him viciously. Ernst departs, but his strategy has worked: the crowd no longer sees Peter as a charismatic leader. Peter is left alone in the hall. The shadowy figure enters, furious that Peter so utterly bungled the confrontation with Ernst. Angrily, Peter demands that the figure emerge from the shadows and reveal himself. He does. It is Adolf Hitler himself! Now hell give the orders. He throws Peter a Luger and commands him to kill Ernst. Believing himself to be made of steel, Peter enters Ernsts apartment and shoots him. Later, a detective and a policeman arrive at the hall to arrest Peter for complicity in Nicks murder. He tries to run, then shoots at them. They return the fire and Peter collapses, bleeding from a bullet wound. Unbelieving, Peter says, Theres something wrong here … Dont you understand that Im made out of steel?