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The Twilight Zone: Vol. 14 |
List Price: $14.99
Your Price: $4.99 |
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Reviews |
Features:
Description:
Volume 14 of The Twilight Zone on DVD is a wall-to-wall tribute to series creator Rod Serling. All four TV episodes represented here are original ideas scripted by Serling himself, with his strengths--and some of his weaknesses--on display. "One for the Angels" was the second episode broadcast in the series and demonstrates Serling's sentimental streak: an aging street peddler (former vaudevillian Ed Wynn) is confronted by Death (Murray Hamilton, bearing a curious resemblance to Serling), but strikes a clever deal to forestall his demise. Ah, but there's always a catch... "The Man in the Bottle" is a variation on the old genie-in-a-magic-lamp number, except that this time the elegant genie comes out of an ordinary wine bottle. Luther Adler plays a bitter antique store owner who learns his lesson in four short wishes. Not much of an episode, really, but the punch line to the third wish is one of those startling twists that stuck in the collective imagination of Zone fans everywhere. The eerie "Arrival" indulges Serling's fondness for aviation stories, as a DC-3 pulls into a hangar with not a soul aboard--not even the pilot. Like many of Serling's tales, it follows the theme of regret, which also hangs heavy in "In Praise of Pip," the opening episode of the series' fifth and final broadcast year, 1963. A two-bit bookie (Jack Klugman) reflects on his wasted life when he learns that his son is near death on a Vietnam battlefield. Although the episode is derivative of Serling's previous efforts on the same topic, this one does provide a glimpse of two actors who appeared frequently on the Zone, Klugman and kid actor Billy Mumy. Klugman's anguished aside about Vietnam ("There isn't even supposed to be a war going on there, and my kid is dying") may well be American popular culture's first, hesitant questioning of a war that would soon bloom into a national nightmare. --Robert Horton
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