“Bring ‘em Back Alive,” (1982), one of the short-lived TV series made in the wake of the pop culture juggernaut of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with Bruce Boxleitner and Cindy Morgan from Tronas a big game hunter in Malaysia who doesn’t kill.
“The name is Grady, five feet short in stockings and boots, a slightly distorted offshoot of a good breed of humans who race horses. He happens to be one of the rotten apples, bruised and yellowed by dealing in dirt, a short man with a short memory who’s forgotten that he’s worked for the sport of kings and helped turn it into a cesspool, used and misused by the two-legged animals who’ve hung around sporting events since the days of the Colosseum. So this is Grady, on his last night as a jockey.”
“I know I had a mental breakdown. I know I had it in an airplane. I know it looks to you as if the same thing is happening again, but it isn’t. I’m sure, it isn’t.”
“Sports item, circa 1974: Battling Maxo, B2, heavyweight, accompanied by his manager and handler, arrives in Maynard, Kansas, for a scheduled six-round bout. Battling Maxo is a robot, or, to be exact, an android, definition: an automaton resembling a human being. Only these automatons have been permitted in the ring since prizefighting was legally abolished in 1968. This is the story of that scheduled six-round bout, more specifically the story of two men shortly to face that remorseless truth: that no law can be passed which will abolish cruelty or desperate need–nor, for that matter, blind animal courage.”
“You’ve just witnessed opportunity, if not knocking, at least scratching plaintively on a closed door. Mr. Julius Moomer, a would-be writer who, if talent came twenty-five cents a pound, would be worth less than car fare. But, in a moment, Mr. Moomer, through the offices of some black magic, is about to embark on a brand-new career.”
“Love has its own particular point of view. It sees everything larger than life. Nothing is too ornate, too fanciful, too dramatic. Love demands the theatrical, and then transfigures it. It turns the grotesque into the lovely, as a child does. With it, we can see what we wish to see in other people. Without it, we can’t see anything at all. We can search forever, and never find.”
“ William Benteen, who had prerogatives: he could lead, he could direct, dictate, judge, legislate. It became a habit, then a pattern, and finally a necessity. William Benteen, once a god–now a population of one.”
“ Mr. Horace Ford, who has a preoccupation with another time, a time of childhood, a time of growing up, a time of street games, stickball and hide-‘n-go-seek. He has a reluctance to go check out a mirror and see the nature of his image: proof positive that the time he dwells in has already passed him by.”
“Mr. William J. Feathersmith, tycoon, who tried the track one more time and found it muddier than he remembered - proving with at least a degree of conclusiveness that nice guys don’t always finish last, and some people should quit when they’re ahead.”
“Martin Lombard Senescu, a gentle man, the dedicated curator of murderers’ row in Ferguson’s Wax Museum. He ponders the reasons why ordinary men are driven to commit mass murder. What Mr. Senescu does not know is that the groundwork has already been laid for his own special kind of madness and torment…”
“Meet Mr. George P. Hanley – a man life treats without deference, honor or respect. Waiters serve his soup cold. Elevator operators close doors in his face. Mechanics overcharge him for half-hearted labor. Novelty cake-bakers misspell his name. Clubs refuse him for membership on sight. Clerks roll their eyes at his questions. Shoeshine boys give him slapdash service at best. Therapists giggle at him. Pledge drive-workers turn down his donations. And mothers never bother to wait up for the daughters he dates. George is a creature of humble habits and tame dreams. He’s an ordinary man, Mr. Hanley. But, at this moment, the accidental possessor of a very special gift: the kind of gift that measures men against their dreams, the kind of gift most of us might ask for first and possibly regret to the last…”
“Major Robert Gaines, a latter-day voyager just returned from an adventure. Submitted to you without any recommendation as to belief or disbelief. You can accept or reject; you pays your money and you takes your choice. But credulous or incredulous, don’t bother to ask anyone for proof that it could happen. The obligation is a reverse challenge: prove that it couldn’t.”
So what’s your favorite episode of The Twilight Zone?
Are you all in for homicidal children’s toys? Dystopian societies? Alien invasions? Or maybe simply questioning the bounds of your own lived reality?
Let’s try and find out what the best episode of the classic series truly is!
This poll is a showdown between the episodes top-rated on IMDb by season.
Tomorrow, New Year’s Day 2022, I’ll post round two, where the top voted episode of each season will go head to head!
The FINAL round of voting for the best Twilight Zone episode of all is here!
In the first round of voting, you decided which of the top-rated episodes of each season of the Twilight Zone was best. Now it’s time to pick the all-around top episode, pitting season vs. season!
But, taking all votes from both accounts (from the first round), here are the top ten episodes:
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
It’s a Good Life
The Masks
Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?
Time Enough at Last
Five Characters in Search of an Exit
The Eye of the Beholder
Printer’s Devil
Living Doll
To Serve Man
I was really glad to see the fourth season not left behind, seeing as it’s the least widely seen season!
Anyhow, thank you all for voting! And happy new year–a year of sound, a year of sight, a year of mind. We’ve moved into a time of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. We’ve just crossed over into… 2022.
“You’ll go back to your bank, and it’ll be business as usual… until next dinnertime, when you’ll give us another vacuous speech about enlarging and strengthening countries by filling graveyards. Well, if THIS country shares your devilishly virile sentiments–as I dread it just might–then you’re in for some gratifying times, Mr. Hanford. Believe me, there’ll be a lot of graveyards for America to fill… and not just her own. We’ll show how red our blood is, because we’ll spill it. And we’ll show how red our neighbors’ blood is, because we’ll spill that too. Chances are you won’t have to spill any yourself, or to be there when all that I’ve spoken of comes to pass. I simply don’t know whether to pity you because of said likelihood, or to envy you for it.”
“Exit the infernal machine, and with it his satanic majesty, Lucifer, prince of darkness - otherwise known as Mr. Smith. He’s gone, but not for good; that wouldn’t be like him - he’s gone for bad.”
“To the average person, a museum is a place of knowledge, a place of beauty and truth and wonder. Some people come to study, others to contemplate, others to look for the sheer joy of looking. Charley Parkes has his own reasons. He comes to the museum to get away from the world. It isn’t really the sixty-cent cafeteria meal that has drawn him here every day, it’s the fact that here in these strange, cool halls, he can be alone for a little while, really and truly alone.”
