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Nightmare Fuel / The Twilight Zone (1959)
aka: The Twilight Zone

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/talkytina_3864.jpg
"My name is Talky Tina, and I am going to kill you!"

"The worst fear of all is the fear of the unknown working on you, which you cannot share with others. To me, that's the most nightmarish of the stimuli."
Rod Serling, interview

With a series as bizarre and disturbing as The Twilight Zone (1959), you bet there's going to be Nightmare Fuel-tastic content. Here is a list of examples.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.


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     General 
  • The theme tune. While some find the '80s version worse, the original is still quite creepy.
  • The intro. Just look at how unnatural everything is moving.

     Season One 
Where is Everybody?
  • It's a simple premise, and an interesting case of Early-Installment Weirdness, but the idea of being alone in empty town, which seems to still have recent signs of life in it, is a very unsettling one.
  • Mike spent 484 hours, or twenty days, in that isolation tank in preparation for a trip to the moon.
  • While the episode's Twist Ending may seem odd to a modern viewer, this was made on the eve of humanity's first ventures into space, before even Yuri Gagarin's historic flight. There was genuinely no consensus as to what would happen to a person who was all alone up in space for that long, whether they would Go Mad from the Isolation or not.

Escape Clause

  • The entire experience of Walter Bedecker, a hypochondriac man desperate to find any sort of thrill when he is unable to die. Everything from jumping off of buildings to running in front of speeding trains; no doubt terrifying many many people through his insurance fraud. And through sheer happenstance his wife ends up dying via falling off the very roof he intended to jump off. Walter feels absolutely nothing beyond his desire to experience the electric chair after claiming to the police he did the deed.

Judgement Night

  • The episode takes place on board of the S.S. Queen of Glasgow, a WWII ship that got separated from her convoy in thick fog... while German U-Boats prowl outside... and the dread and tension builds and builds as the main character becomes convinced that they are being stalked by a German U-Boat and that something bad is going to happen at 1:15 in the morning. It turns out the that the main character was the U-Boat captain that sank the ship without warning, killing everyone on board and scoffing the notion from one of his underlings that God will judge them for that they've done. Then it cuts back to the opening scene, showing that the Captain has been damned to repeat the events of that fateful night... for all of eternity.

Time Enough at Last

  • The episode features Burgess Meredith as a meek clerk who loves to read, but never has the time to... Until a nuclear blast kills everyone else in the world. First, the episode plays on our Primal Fear of loneliness, and second, there's the famous ending where his glasses slip off his nose and shatter, with him shouting, "It's not fair! There was time now!" Whether the ending is scary or unintentionally hilarious, the idea of being completely alone for the rest of your life, on top of not being able to see clearly.
    • The ending showing the aftermath of the destruction the bomb did and the fact all the humans, except for Mr. Bemis, are dead.

Perchance to Dream

  • The dream sequences with the freaky looking amusement park, the shrieking laughter of an unseen woman, the Femme Fatale with that eerie, seductive voice, and finally the climax where the guy sees the woman from his nightmare.
  • Even the premise is a nightmare in itself: there is an actual, extremely rare condition which can cause a person to experience tachycardia or even stop the heart when surprised by loud noises or shocking experiences. The sensation of your heart skipping a beat can be lethal for these people.

And When the Sky Was Opened

  • Three astronauts are in a hospital recovering from their mission. They start disappearing not just from sight but from memory. And no one knows why. Even the spaceship disappears in the end.
  • As soon as you figure out what happened to Harrington, you know the same thing will happen to Forbes, and HE knows it as well. And there's also the fact that the second that they're out of sight they vanish. Could it have been prevented if there was always someone looking at them? The title itself is one of the eeriest in the show; not being linked to the story, it leaves the viewer to guess as to what it means. It seems to imply that the sky is swallowing the men up when they disappear.
  • Also, the subtle horror — you could lose your identity or life at any moment if some force beyond your control wills it so.

I Shot an Arrow Into the Air

  • The episode revolves around the first manned mission into space (the episode was made before the 1969 Moon Landing), which loses contact with Earth, and crashes on an unknown desert planet. The crash kills most of the crew, and destroys most of the supplies, leaving three men stranded in a harsh, unforgiving terrain with very limited water. What's worse, the ship was a PROTOTYPE, and the only one of its kind; a replacement would require years to produce, leaving little to no hope of rescue. One of the survivors quickly begins to lose his mind, and kills one of the other three while he is returning from a recon mission, seemingly in a hurry. Before the crewman dies, he scribbles an odd symbol into the sand that resembles a cross with two horizontal lines on it. The killer overpowers and murders the remaining survivor, takes the water that's left, and begins to climb the surrounding mountains, eventually reaching the summit, where he sees what his first victim saw, and instantly breaks down in tears. The symbol in the sand was that of an electrical pole, overlooking a highway leading to Reno. They never left Earth; they simply crashed in the Nevada desert.

The Hitch-Hiker

  • A lady, Nan Adams, is on a cross-country drive. Somewhere along the middle of the drive, this creepy guy in black begins to stalk her, trying to lead her into all sorts of lethal situations. Creepy enough on its own, but it gets worse when you find out that she died in a car accident somewhere during the middle of the drive, and the guy was actually the Angel Of Death.
    "I believe you are going my way..."
  • The part when the lady's car got stuck on the railroad track and nearly gets killed.
  • The sudden shot where the hitchhiker's face suddenly pops into frame.

The Fever

  • The episode has one of the most chilling allegories for a gambling addiction ever put on screen, complete with Franklin succumbing to the Gambler's Fallacy. Even worse in that Franklin was never addicted to begin with - his addiction began and lasted for merely two days.
  • The ghastly, creaky, static-toned 'FRANKLIN' noise made by the slot machine in the climax.
  • The ending itself is unnerving. We get a nice view of Franklin's broken corpse before and after the police and doctors leave. Then Franklin's last dollar comes spinning across the pavement, resting near his outstretched hand. The camera pans up to reveal the slot machine standing there, somehow having left the hotel of its own accord, before it turns itself off. This being the Twilight Zone, it seems the only explanation is that Franklin wasn't hallucinating at all - the slot machine really is sentient and can move on its own.

Elegy

  • The robot caretaker of the asteroid cemetery kills the astronauts because men are incapable of peace.
  • The Reveal means all of the people in the model town standing around and not moving are actual dead bodies of real people.
  • The final scene, with the caretaker dusting the frozen corpses of the three astronauts as chipper music plays, is viscerally unsettling.

Mirror Image

  • A woman is waiting in a bus station. Her bags get moved around and the clerk says that she did it. She meets a man that later calls the cops on her for saying that there's an evil lookalike among them. Then the man turns and sees a lookalike of himself...

The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

  • The episode "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" is scary mainly because of the real life subtext. Especially when you consider that "Due" aired almost 50 years before the remake, and how little things have changed...
    "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs, and explosions, and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy. And a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own - for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is, that these things cannot be confined...to the Twilight Zone."
  • The neighbors end up shooting an innocent man dead, simply because they were frightened and he had the misfortune to be walking towards them up a darkened street.
  • The ending when they are all freaking out and the close ups of their faces make it really creepy.

A World of Difference

  • Imagine going about your day, doing something you do all the time, just to hear someone yell "cut" and when you turn around, you see that you're on a movie set with everyone insisting that you're an actor and the person you thought you were was just a character in a movie.

Long Live Walter Jameson

  • The way Jameson rapidly aged until he was nothing but a pile of clothes and dust after he was shot was equally creepy.
    • The radio drama makes it worse by having him melt.
  • The old woman from the radio drama version was especially creepy to some people: "Hello, Tommy...I saw my Tommy. He's resting now."

A Nice Place to Visit

  • The Twist Ending, no matter how much the man deserved it. After a thug died he was sent to a heaven where he has everything he could ever want, but he got bored after a month and asked to be taken to Hell instead of Heaven, only for his guide to tell him he's been in Hell the whole time. He tries to escape the apartment, but is trapped with his guide maniacally laughing at his panic.

Nightmare as a Child

  • Markie. She may be one of the good guys, but she sure is a Creepy Child.
    And you screamed so loud! And you screamed so loud! And you screamed so loud!
  • Peter Selden murdered his employer in a fit of rage when she refused to cover for his embezzling, and her young daughter witnessed the murder. Ever since then he's been keeping tabs on her, against the day when the memory comes back!

A Stop at Willoughby

The Chaser

  • The idea that someone could derail your entire life, not just destroying all your own plans and hopes for the future but overwriting your personality into a humiliating love-slave persona. Not to mention the implication that this was done to a number of others before Leila, many of whom were subsequently murdered. It's made all the more chilling by the incongruously lighthearted tone of the episode.

The After Hours

  • The living mannequins surround Marsha and begin repeating her name, causing her to break down in tears. Don't see this episode if you have a fear of mannequins or of losing your memory.
    "Marsha? Marsha?"

     Season Two 

Eye of the Beholder

  • Most of the horror is in Janet's bandaged face, and the fact that we don't see her face until the last act, but the nurse and doctor talk about how this woman hasn't been able to live an even vaguely normal life, because her face is so hideously deformed... brrr.
    "TAKE IT OFF MEEEEE!!!"
  • At the end, we see the standard she's held up to in the pig-nosed, hideous doctors and nurses.
    "Needle, please."
  • The Hitler-esque dictator of the State.
    The Leader: Blanket the Earth, and infiltrate and weaken! We know now that there must be a single purpose, a single norm, a single approach, a single entity of peoples, a single virtue, a single morality, a single frame of reference, a single philosophy of government! We must cut out all that is different like a cancerous growth! It is essential in this society, that we not only have a norm, but that we CONFORM to that norm! Differences weaken us! Variations destroy us! An incredible permissiveness to deviation from this norm is what has ended nations and brought them to their knees. Conformity we must worship and hold sacred! Conformity is the key to survival!

Nick of Time

  • Newlyweds Don (played by William Shatner) and Pat stop in a small time to get a bite to eat at a diner; they start playing with the freaky Devil-head fortune teller, whose fortunes are eerily accurate. At the end of the episode they manage to escape - but another couple rushes in who are completely enslaved to the answers the thing gives them.

The Lateness of the Hour

  • The episode centers around a young woman who lives with her elderly parents and their domestic robots. She begins to wonder why she and her parents never go outside and questions other such abnormal behavior. The twist is that she is a robot built to be their daughter, and when she figures this out, she freaks. She starts hitting her arm screaming "No pain!" and lastly says "I can't even feel love!" The parents then convert her to a maid robot that then gives the mother a shoulder massage. Worse, it's easy for them to reprogram their "daughter" because they never considered her human, just a machine they can discard if she became too much to handle.

A Most Unusual Camera

  • The ending, where everyone except the French Waiter has died by falling out of a window, then we hear this:
    Waiter: Yes, there are more than two bodies down there. Just as the picture shows...one...two...three...FOUR? (He drops the camera in shock, we focus on it as we hear the Waiter scream.)
  • The end dialogue implies the camera had been plotting the four characters' deaths the whole time.

The Invaders

  • Part of what makes that episode so brilliant is that it's terrifying before and after you know the Twist Ending, but for completely different reasons.
    • The first time you watch it, you see it from the perspective of the elderly woman who lives in complete isolation, and starts doubting her sanity when an army of pint-sized creatures invade her house in the dead of night. Then they attack her with her own knife, among other things.
    • The second time, you see it from the perspective of the helpless human astronauts who have to contend with a terrified alien the size of a skyscraper.

Twenty-Two

  • The nurse/stewardess from the nightmare. "Room for one more, honey."
  • Like "Little Girl Lost" and "Living Doll", "Twenty-Two" was also remade into a feature film. That film? Final Destination.

The Odyssey of Flight 33

  • A jumbo jet full of passengers somehow travels back in time, once to where they go back to the dinosaur era and again when they go back to the 1930s. It ends with the pilot trying to get the plane to travel forward in time, but there's no way of knowing when they'll end up. Take into account that their fuel and food will eventually run out, and you've got some horrific implications.

Long Distance Call

  • A young boy named Billy claims that he uses a toy telephone to speak with his grandmother. However, the audience knows by this point that the grandmother had recently died. It soon turns out that the grandmother keeps saying that she misses her grandson and is lonely without him. His parents think nothing about it, for the time being... until their son runs out into the path of a car. When they parents ask the driver, he only says that someone told him to do it. And it doesn't stop there - once the father takes Billy's toy telephone away, Billy then attempts to drown himself in order to join his grandmother.

Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?

  • Haley, the man in the diner, turns out to be from Venus, with a creepy third eye under his hat.

The Obsolete Man

  • It turns out that because a high official of a state that executes people for being obsolete showed some weakness, he is considered obsolete by his people. The crowd in the room slowly circles him, before screaming in unison and pouncing on him as he struggles to escape. Another case of Asshole Victim and Karmic Death. The worst part? The state negated an act of great mercy this way.
  • The crowd of the State's board members circling the Chancellor is particularly notable, as they all slowly start growling angrily until they start screaming and pouncing. For all their claims of superiority, it becomes increasingly clear that the people in charge are barely holding back their pure seething hatred at being embarrassed on live TV.

     Season Three 

The Shelter

  • This episode might be the most terrifying of all, as it reveals just how thin and fragile the veneer of civilization is, even more so than the more famous episode "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street". Imagine your beloved friends and neighbors becoming your mortal enemies because a disaster is coming, and you have a way to escape it, while they don't. And it's hard not to imagine not becoming a bastard yourself if you're one of those in the "unprepared for disaster and screwed" column. What depths wouldn't you yourself sink to, in order to save your life or the lives of your children?
    • Just as the neighbors and friends batter down the shelter door (which they know only has enough supplies for three people)...the Civil Defense announces that the event that started the mad panic for survival turned out to be a false alarm. The others apologize to the doctor (the owner of the shelter) and each other for their behavior, even offering to pay for the damages...but the damage has been done. The doctor muses if they had been destroyed without a bomb. They were perfectly willing to save themselves and throw their friend (who they had thrown a birthday party for at the beginning of the episode) and his family under the bus just for a chance at survival.

The Grave

  • Gunman Conny Miller pursues outlaw Pinto Sykes for a bounty - only to find three men beat him to the punch. A displeased Miller then learns that Sykes threatened him in the end, vowing to rise up and grab him from the grave. This leads to a dare to go the grave at night, with sticking a knife into the ground as proof of visit. Miller seems afraid, but fulfills the dare only to mysteriously fall over and not return the next day. The three men go to the grave to find out what happened and are joined by Sykes' sister Ione. They find Miller's body over the grave, his body pinned by a knife through his coattail. One of the men comes up with a perfectly rational explanation: the wind blew the coattail over the grave, it was caught accidentally by the knife and the resulting tug Miller would've felt scared him further - leading to a fatal heart attack. All so rational, but the wind was blowing the opposite direction as pointed out by Ione, who knows the truth and laughs as we leave the graveyard.
  • The Credits shot of the grave itself, combined with the already-creepy theme tune of the show, puts a cherry on top of the whole "Scary story" theme the episode was aiming for.

It's a Good Life

Deaths-Head Revisited

  • We see justice without mercy. It isn't pretty, although the recipient (a sadistic former SS captain) actually inflicted the pain he's feeling on his prisoners, so it's really hard to feel too sorry for him.
    • Making it worse? Becker reveals to a now insane Lutze that this is only the beginning for him...and that his final judgement will come from God. And given that the majority of Lutze's victims worshipped an all-powerful, omnipotent, just God who (famously) broke a powerful empire that had enslaved them because they wouldn't "let My people go"...
  • At one point the ghost of one of his prisoners mentioned the SS Captain does "unmentionable things" to people in a certain building. The captain falls to the ground, clutching his groin. Now think about the Nazi stand on eugenics for a second.
  • And that's what makes this episode terrifying: it's not the pain that's inflicted, but how much the recipient deserves it. The Asshole Victim trope was taken up to eleven here as we see him reminisce about all the "good times" he had ruthlessly torturing innocent people, which makes the judgement he goes through actually quite satisfying in retrospect. it helps that, as implied above, he raped and castrated innocent civilians among other things.
  • Also, whenever Captain Lütze tries to justify or undermine his horrific acts he (and the audience) can hear ghostly wailing coming from the barracks, a noise which greatly unsettles him to say the least.
    Captain Lütze: What was that? It sounded like...
    Becker: The wind, Captain?

The Mirror

  • A Latin American dictator is presented with a mirror that supposedly shows which people will try to kill him. One by one, he kills his four closest friends due to the mirror showing them, and he keeps on executing members of the old regime, only to commit suicide at the end.
  • What makes it especially unsettling is the classic question of whether or not anything supernatural is even happening, or if the character in question is simply losing his mind through paranoia and fear, turning on the people who he trusted most, and doing so with such incredible ease. It's frightening to think of a person with so much power being so fragile, but truly anyone could find themselves in such a position, either turning against the people closest to them out of sheer panic... or finding someone close to you turning against you for no sane reason.

The Midnight Sun

  • "Please... paint something cool!" And of course, later Mrs. Bronson just rambling on about a waterfall and swimming in the water before falling over dead.
  • The part where the woman screams and everything in the room just starts melting...
  • The very premise: the earth has fallen out of its elliptical orbit and is about to be consumed by the sun. Think of it this way: Everyone on the planet spends their last hours burning to death. At the end of the episode, it's revealed that the scenario was All Just a Dream, caused by the main character's dangerously high fever. So everything's okay... Until her doctor and neighbor start talking about how the earth has moved out of its elliptical orbit away from the sun and will completely freeze over in up to 3 weeks. *shudder*
  • The fact that, according to Rod Serling himself, the Earth has moved so close to the sun that, even though it's five minutes to midnight, there's no more darkness.

The Jungle

  • According to the main character's wife, he and his company have been cursed by the jungles of Africa for "wounding" the land, for "making it bleed". The main character, although a skeptic, best describes that the African tribe who invoked the curse are infamous for making the people they curse die without explanation.
  • On his way home, the main character tries to take a cab home. And after stopping at a red light, he tries to urge the cab driver that the light is green and they can go. ...Only, when he touches the still cab driver's shoulder, the driver drops dead like a twig!
  • After running through the early morning streets, surrounded by the sounds of wild animals, beating tribal drums and loud chanting, he finally makes it home to his apartment and the noises stop. He decides to pour himself a drink, only to hear something else coming from his bedroom. He opens the door to see a lion sitting on his bed, having already mauled his wife. The episode ends as the lion pounces him offscreen, leaving us with nothing but roars and screaming.

Five Characters in Search of an Exit

  • Its Nightmare Fuel status is given to us by Rod Serling himself in the opening monologue, when he tells us that we'll find out what their situation is, but we won't see it end. God, that alone is enough to give someone the permanent heebie-jeebies. The reveal is just... Horrifying.
  • The clown was pretty disturbing in how he seemed to constantly turn on a dime between funny and depressing while always keeping that smile painted on his face.
  • Whatever the viewer's reaction to the twist ending, the psychological torture the characters experience is just... *shivers*. The major (and later the clown) said it best: "We are in Hell." (Luckily, the fact it is more of a Purgatory and that the narrator strongly implies an eventual happy ending for all the toys lessens the intensity a bit and adds a Heartwarming Moment.)

One More Pallbearer

  • Radin's air of confidence and in-control-ness belies a surprisingly tenuous sanity.
    • His hallucination at the end, where he is the last survivor in a bombed-out wasteland.

Dead Man's Shoes

  • Shoes possessed by the ghost of a double-crossed mobster, that force whoever wears them to carry out the mobster's revenge against his killer or die trying.

To Serve Man

  • How the Kanamit ambassador beat the lie detector test. Their race do not find anything wrong with eating humans. Technically they weren't there to harm humans... but it would suck for those humans that do get eaten.
    • Actually, they were completely honest about the questions they were asked. The Kanamits are genuinely here to make Earth a paradise, to eliminate war, hunger, disease and pain... because as any farmer can tell you, the happier and healthier your livestock is, the better their meat will be. And they aren't on Earth to harm humans, because the actual killing and processing will take place on the Kanamit homeworld.
  • The Reveal in the Twist Ending itself, is actually rather horrifying, as Mr. Chambers is preparing to join the group of humans on their journey to the Kanamit home planet when Patty shows up, being held back...
    Patty: Mr. Chambers, don't get on that ship! The rest of the book, "To Serve Man", it's... IT'S A COOKBOOK!!!
    (Chambers attempts to escape but is dragged screaming onto the UFO, as the hatch is sealed behind him)
    • The episode ending, which involves Chambers giving in to the Kanamits attempts at Fattening the Victim, resigned to his fate, and Breaking the Fourth Wall to tell the viewers it doesn't matter if they're still on Earth or on the ship with him, they're all going to inevitably end up as food.

Little Girl Lost

  • If the premise of a Negative Space Wedgie spontaneously forming in your house isn't freaky enoughnote , the idea of being able to hear a lost child crying out in distress and being unable to find her or help her is Nightmare Fuel to many parents. This episode was also remade into Poltergeist, widely considered by many to be one of the scariest movies of all time.
  • Chris and Ruth's worries when they realize that Tina is not in her bed, but they can hear her calling for them. They spend several minutes searching under the bed and all around the room, fearing the worst. Their dog Mack barks and insists on being let inside; they do so and he runs under the bed. His barking abruptly stops. Fortunately, it turns out Mack can navigate through the Fourth Dimension and successfully finds Tina.
  • Meanwhile, Tina keeps saying, "Mommy? Daddy? Where are you?" and it echoes around the house. Ruth understandably wants to go through the portal to save her daughter while calling out for her.
  • The ending where it was revealed the portal was closing and had the father stayed there a few more seconds he would've been cut in half.

Person or Persons Unknown

  • The idea that you could wake up one morning and discover all evidence for your existence has been wiped away. Everyone's memories of you have been erased, all pictures of you have been changed, someone else has your job, and your entire identity is considered some kind of delusion. Except you're still very much alive and remember everything like it used to be. Or your own memories could be changed instead, so you'd wake up to find everyone acts the same as you remember, but they now look like complete strangers.

The Little People

  • The story itself is about two men who land on a planet where they discover it's colonized by very tiny aliens and one of the men becomes the "god" of them. Towards the end the other man tries to talk some sense into this friend by telling him that they have to leave and if he doesn't come he's leaving without him. He refuses and he tells him that soon he'll get bored and regret not coming. He still refuses and the man leaves without him.
  • The Fridge Horror of the near-ending, in two ways:
    • The astronaut: If it hadn't been for the colossal spaceman accidentally crushing him to death, this man could've spent the rest of his life in utter boredom and regret of not going back.
    • The aliens: This man had no problem crushing them at will. If he hadn't been stopped by the huge spacemen, they would be at the mercy of a larger creature and would have to live in constant fear of him killing them.

The Dummy

  • "The Dummy" where an alcoholic ventriloquist is being tormented by his own puppet and no one believes him because he's alcoholic. In the end, the puppet taunts his owner and a new ventriloquist performs in his place; this ventriloquist looks exactly like the puppet and the puppet looks like the ventriloquist. It's unknown how that happened, but it's probably better left unknown.
    • However the Nightmare Fuel is considerably lessened when you consider that the ending is implied to be more an artistic representation of what REALLY happened. In the episode, the ventriloquist is constantly upstaged by the puppet who pretty much does all the work for him, making all the jokes and stuff like that. The end is meant to represent that the act is no longer belonging to the ventriloquist, but the dummy, and the ventriloquist on some level has accepted that. The ventriloquist is the one who stays silent from now on—and the DUMMY is now the center of attention.

I Sing the Body Electric

  • While it may not have been intentional, the factory man showing off pieces for the "Grandmothers" — things like eyes and hands that are not attached to anything — was somewhat creepy.

     Season Four 

The Thirty-Fathom Grave

He's Alive

  • Ernst's scene in the soda shop is nightmare fuel enough as he describes just how men like Peter Vollmer take power.
  • The simple concept that as long as hatred exists in the world, Hitler may as well still be alive could be this or despair fuel.
  • The last shot of Hitler's shadow moving down the alley as Rod Serling delivers his closing narration about how hatred is kept alive is downright chilling.

Printer's Devil

  • Three of Burgess Meredith's four performances on The Twilight Zone ("Time Enough At Last", "The Obsolete Man" and "Mr. Dingle, The Strong") have been sympathetic characters. Then there's this episode, where he plays the mysterious Mr. Smith, a reporter and linotype operator that has come to save a failing newspaper. Like his other performances, Meredith plays the character as charming and very helpful...with a bit of an edge that gets more and more pronounced the longer the episode runs. Then you learn the truth about Mr. Smith...He's the Devil, come to collect the editor's soul in exchange for saving the paper. Yes, Burgess Meredith managed to take the traits that made his previous appearances on the show famous and turn them on their heads so they are chilling as opposed to charming.

The New Exhibit

  • The wax figures. They act like reincarnations of serial killers. If you leave your closet open at night, with no night-light, room light, or hallway light, it's going to be hard to sleep at night. The smile of the Jack the Ripper wax figure makes you terrified about how lowly and laughable they think of you, it doesn't matter whether they're going to do anything to you or not.
  • The ending is nerve-wracking. After the wax Landru murders Mr. Ferguson, Martin threatens to destroy the wax figures... who promptly begin moving towards him, all while blaming him for all the deaths that occurred during the episode. It is not clear at all if they are lying. And then, a brief Flash Forward later, and we see a Marchand's Wax Museum guide showing out a particular wax figure: one Martin Senescu, who is believed to have murdered his wife, brother-in-law, and best friend. What makes things worse is that it's heavily implied that Martin's corpse is part of the figure.
    Rod Serling: The new exhibit became very popular at Marchand's, but of all the figures none was ever regarded with more dread than that of Martin Lombard Senescu. It was something about the eyes, people said. It's the look that one often gets after taking a quick walk through the Twilight Zone.

     Season Five 

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet

  • No matter how cheesy the monster on the plane may look nowadays, it's still a shock when William Shatner's character slowly reaches for the curtain in front of the window on the airplane... then pulls it back really quick and the monster is RIGHT THERE WITH ITS FACE AGAINST THE WINDOW.
  • The fact that the end of the episode confirms Bob wasn't crazy: the Gremlin was real, the engine is badly damaged, and nobody else realized it was there. Everyone on that plane was at serious risk of dying in a horrifying crash and nobody would've known why. How many other planes have been brought down by them?

A Kind of Stopwatch

  • McNulty was kind of a Jerkass, but he still didn't deserve to be trapped forever in a frozen moment of time where nothing moves. The more you consider the Fridge Horror of it the scarier it gets.

Living Doll

  • All the horror of the episode is worsened given that the episode was remade into Child's Play.
  • "My name is Talky Tina, and I'M GOING TO KILL YOU." It was a thousand times scarier when the episode aired because the doll was voiced by June Foray, the same woman who voiced an actual talking doll called Chatty Cathy, which looked very similar to the Tina. What's more, June was mostly well-known for lightweight roles in the Looney Tunes series and as the original Rocket J. Squirrel, making this one hell of an example of her rarely Playing Against Type.
  • Early in the episode, when talking with the doll at the dinner table, Erich pokes in the nose with a lit match, causing it make a startled noise. When he notes this means it has feelings, Tina responds "Doesn't everything?" This comes back around disconcertingly when Erich tries to destroy the doll while in the garage; as Erich attempts to crush its head in a vice, as seen above, and it doesn't have any effect:
    Erich: I thought you said you had feelings.
  • The last thing Tina says to Erich:
    "My name is Talky Tina and I don't forgive you."
  • The ending is particularly chilling, after Annabelle finds him dead after being tripped down the stairs by the doll. When she picks the doll up, she opens her eyes and says "My name is Talky Tina. And you better be nice to me." It is the first time Tina speaks to someone other than Erich... and it confirms that he wasn't just going crazy.
  • What about this slice of Fridge Horror: What would happen when Christie (the man's stepdaughter) gets bored of her?

Uncle Simon

  • Aging scientist Simon and his niece Barbara hate each other, but she takes care of him because she's his only heir. However, she finally tires of his abuse and kills him, thinking that she is finally free—until she discovers that her uncle's will says she has to take care of a robot he invented or be disinherited. The robot slowly starts acting as her uncle did, so if she still wants his money then she is stuck with a never sleeping, immortal version of her uncle to make her life horrible until she dies.

Number 12 Looks Just Like You

  • Marilyn is told that she doesn't have to have the transformation; she's just highly encouraged to. But no matter where the girl turns, no matter how much she insists that she likes herself the way she is, everyone from her best friend to her own mother just laugh and puzzle over how silly she's being. Finally, the hospital staff kidnap her while she's trying to escape from her room, lead her into the place where the makeovers are done, and give it to her against her will. And the peak of how horrible it all is? Rod Serling ends the tale by pointing out how, in the age of cosmetics we live in, it's entirely possible that this could be the future we have to look forward to! The episode supposedly takes place in the year 2000. But before you laugh, how much of this episode could be called Zeerust, really, especially if you add a couple decades to that date?
    • During Marilyn's escape attempt, she bumps into a patient who (presumably) just underwent the Transformation. The patient just smiles at Marilyn, clearly happy at the result and (as confirmed by Dr. Rex in a later scene) has her entire personality stripped away. Marilyn looks in horror at the nurse (also played by the same actress as the patient) and the nurse gives her the same smile...brr...
  • The Downer Ending. Marilyn, having had the transformation forced on her, no longer cares!
    And the nicest part of all, Val... I look just like you!
    • It is made all the more worse when you consider the last shot of the episode: as Rod Serling finishes up his narration, Marilyn turns and smiles at the camera, dead-eyed.
    • If you watch carefully as the final shot fades, you can see Marilyn's smile fade away. This could've been an accident as the actress (Pamela Austin) probably heard the call "Cut" too early. But it can also mean that the person Marilyn was...is still in there.

Black Leather Jackets

  • The plot: your next door neighbors and your police force could be part of an alien race that invaded Earth to exterminate all life on the planet for the sake of making room for their own race.

Night Call

  • An old, wheelchair-bound woman receives constant phone calls from a man who only says "Hello? Where are you? I need to talk to you." That's bad enough on its own; what makes it scarier than shit is how the man's voice sounds so goddamn ghostly... The identity of the caller? HER DEAD HUSBAND! Telephone wires had snapped in a storm and come to rest over his grave.
  • In some ways, the ending is worse: disturbed by the calls, the woman finally demands that the calls stop... only to then find out who they are from and beg for them to start again. Doubles as a Tear Jerker. However, it got neutered from the original short story. In the story there is no mention of it being her husband: she simply discovers that the calls are coming from the cemetery, and the next phone call (and the last line of the story) is "Hello, Miss Elise. I'll be right over." Brr.

From Agnes With Love

  • The episode is heaped with Nightmare and Paranoia Fuel. A machine, Agnes, sabotages a man's attempts to impress a coworker because the computer is in love with the man. After the computer admits it loves the man, he's eventually reduced to a neurotic wreck and is given a leave of absence, and it is implied the same will happen to his replacement.
    James Elwood: (dazed) Two times two equals four shut the door. Two and four are six pick up sticks.

Spur of the Moment

  • A young woman on horseback sees an older woman on a horse at the top of a hill, dressed in black, raising her cape like the wing of a vulture and chasing after her. It's even more terrifying when it's revealed it's her future self trying to warn her not to marry the wrong man and ruining her life. In retrospect, she probably shouldn't have yelled like a banshee at her younger self!

Queen of the Nile

What's in the Box?

  • Sterling Holloway's telephone repairman, who seemingly causes the whole plot because Joe complained about the bill. "You will recommend my service... won't you?" It gets even creepier upon the realization that this is literally Winnie the Pooh's voice talking.

The Masks

I Am The Night- Color Me Black

  • The premise alone is very unsettling: The sun fails to rise on the morning of a condemned man's execution. The man in question killed a bigot in self-defense, but said bigot was very popular with the residents of the town and now they're all eager to see the man die. As the town's Reverend speaks with them and the man, it becomes clear to him that the reason why it's dark is because of all their hate; the bigot's hate, the town's hate, even the man's hate. There's so much of it that it's literally blacking the sky and choking them all. And when the man is executed and the Reverend explains it all to the crowd, the town gets even darker...
    • The ending reveals this isn't an isolated incident either. Dealey Plaza, a section of the Berlin Wall, a political prison in Budapest, sections of Chicago and Shanghai, Birmingham and all of Northern Vietnam have been plunged into darkness as well. All places in the world rife with hatred. As the ending narration makes clear, it's not something you look for in the Twilight Zone. You look for it in a mirror, before it's too late.
  • The condemned man (Jagger) is prickly and cold with everyone around him. You can chalk this up to Jagger being (understandably) furious at being unjustly executed for killing a popular bigot in self defense. However, as Jagger is being taken to the gallows, the Reverend tries to talk to him. It comes out, much to the Reverend's growing dismay and horror that the one person who stood up for him and his congregation in the whole town is also burning with the same hatred that drove the bigot to persecute them.

Caesar and Me

  • The episode ends with the puppet persuading a bratty girl no older than 11 to kill her grandmother with a poison dart and by the look on her face, she's willing to comply.

You Drive

  • Sure the hit-and-run driver's car was acting as his conscience and endeavoring to make justice happen, but still, imagine having a car with a will of its own.

Stopover in a Quiet Town

  • The sheer creepiness of most of the episode. A bickering married couple awaken after a car crash to find themselves in a seemingly abandoned and unnatural town, haunted by ringing church bells and the sound of an unseen child's laughter, and trapped in a loop where every way out just leads back where they started. It's like an early draft of Silent Hill...
  • The Reveal: the couple are going to spend the rest of their lives alone as a giant alien's dolls in a toy town.

Come Wander With Me

  • A traveling musician, Floyd Burney, gets himself stuck in a time loop predestined by an eerie folk song in which a local young woman becomes smitten with him, only for Floyd to accidently murder a young man in a squabble, then be chased down and killed by the young man's brothers.

The Bewitchin' Pool


Alternative Title(s): The Twilight Zone

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