Things keep Kevin Baconing to Twilight Zone, so I ought to have a final decisive landing pad post for Twilight Zone.
So, here we go....
Night Gallery (1970-1973)
The Sixth Sense (1972)
I love the shit out of original Twilight Zone.
MeTV and SyFy both have marathons on July 4th, and New Year's.
It's an embarrassment of riches on those days.
The older I get, the more I love it, and the less I give a damn about the rest of TV.
The new shows on "legacy TV" can eat shit.
Sitcoms I grew up with haven't aged well at all.
Nothing from the 90's that wasn't sci-fi and/or British held up.
Yeah, I think about all I watch on "regular ass TV" anymore is reruns of Zone, MASH, Bunker, Carol, Hitchcock, and the big 5-show Star Trek block.
And Starz movies. And Outlander whenever they lazily see fit to make a season.
Night Gallery! Night Gallery...I have complicated feelings about Night Gallery.
My mother loved it as a teen, and when the reruns came on, she wanted me to love it too.
I think it's mostly goofy. There are genuine gold nuggets in there here and there, but for the most part, it does not live up to Zone. It's bloodier, I'll give it that. But the gore effects haven't held up.
The behind the scenes was Serling cussing and shaking his fists at network dummies out of a Screen Rant "Pitch Meeting" skit. So, Serling wouldn't be offended at my assessment.
But! Quality decrease aside, it's more Zone in everything but name.
My head-canon is the gallery exists in the Twilight Zone.
CometTV has Night Gallery, and it's on early mornings on weekends, and...I could take it or leave it.
I'll watch if it's a good one, but I won't bust my ass to find it.
Sixth Sense, I already covered pretty well here.
It's the last episodes of Night Gallery now.
I like it better than regular Night Gallery.
It's almost as good as Kolchak. Almost.
And, that's the original era.
It kinda fizzled out with a whimper.
But dammit, Rod fought like Daredevil to keep it going as long it did.
14 years ain't too shabby. That's two 90's Star Treks. Not bad at all.
Twilight Zone The Movie (1983)
The Twilight Zone (1985-1989)
Amazing Stories (1985-1987)
All right, The Movie.
I'll finally address the elephant in the room.
Vic Morrow got his head chopped off by a helicopter.
Spielberg washed his hands and feet of John Landis, and Landis wriggled free somehow, but his career was still never the same.
Sick irony is, Morrow and the two kids died for an extra added scene that wasn't even needed.
Cutting it didn't change the original script one bit.
They died for nothing.
I loved the flick as a kid though! Got endless play on HBO.
It's pretty much just effects-enhanced period-updated remakes of 4 episodes.
"It's A Good Life" is a remake-quel that gives the omnipotent kid and his victims a happy ending.
And "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is a Richard Matheson.
Ironically, I could gladly skip "Kick The Can" and "Time Out" the Spielberg and Landis ones, respectively.
So! The second series in the 80's, and Amazing Stories.
I can't prove this, but the details just add up.
After the helicopter accident, Spielberg unloaded the rights to Zone like a plague ship.
But! He still wanted to make "Twilight Zone"! So, he made his own Zone out of "Amazing Stories".
The boon for fans, is we got two anthology sci-fis for the price of one out of it.
And they were on the same day on staggered time slots, so you could just change channels after Amazing, and watch the Zone episode.
Amazing was Spielberg-ian, and optimistic, and well, corny.
The Zones were darker. Dark 80's Zone was what Night Gallery wished it was.
There were occasional bright/funny Zones, and occasional dark spooky Amazing, but for the most part, that was the tone split.
60's Zone had both dark and corny ones, so it was okay.
It's wild to consider; I oddly recall 80's Zone as being a quickie like the two 21st century revivals, but it hung on almost as long as 60's Zone! 😮
No one reruns it though. 😒
Fun facts: Amazing Stories the magazine was put out by Hugo Gernsback who the Hugo award is named after.
And, they published Ursula Le Guin's first story.
A shame we never got a Zone or a Trek out of her.
But, I think she hated TV's guts.
After how they treated Rod Serling, and how they butchered the SYFY miniseries/movie of Earthsea, I Kinda don't blame her.
Still, hers would have been awesome.
Oh! And there was a reboot of Hitchcock on at this time too.
It was mostly period-updated and nastier bloodier remakes of the old ones with the original Hitch hosting segments colorized. So, you had Amazing, Zone, and Hitch as a trilogy that same night every week. Zone and Hitch were on the same network.
Twilight Zone: Rod Serling's Lost Classics (1994)
The Twilight Zone (2002-2003)
The Twilight Zone (2019-2020)
I just found out "Lost Classics" was a thing Friday, and watched it on YT yesterday.
It was my TIL for this.
You can watch it here.
I left a comment there that says it all.
Just found out this existed. I don't know how I missed it. 19 year old me was distracted by a lot of dumb stuff, but I can't imagine him missing new Zone. Whelp! I'm seeing it now! Mistake rectified!
So, basically, Serling's widow found two lost scripts, one complete, one in outline.
The outline she had fleshed out by Richard Matheson, because...Richard Matheson.
Then, they mooshed these two episodes into a TV movie.
Like I said, I fucking missed it.
I still don't know how I did this. 🤦♂️
I liked it okay. It's similar to 80's Zone in its look and style.
James Earl Jones narrates.
He tells us right away, Rod Serling was television's greatest storyteller.
Well! I agree, but, he wasn't treated that way alive! Poor bastard had to die to get his kudos.
Murca!!! 🙄😓🤦♂️ But, still good that we finally got there. 🤷♂️
Anyway!!
Starting with Jones, we have visible narrators again like Serling in Zone and Gallery.
Burgess Meredith audio-narrated the 80's movie, and Charles Aidman and Robin Ward did the 80's show revival.
The YT uploader left in the old 90's commercials, and among them is an ad for "Carol Burnett: The Special Years"!
I got a kick out of that.
I tried to find the special to watch, and its gone down the same memory hole as "Jokebook".
Oh, here's a connection! Scatman Crothers did the song for "Jokebook" and he was in "TZ:The Movie".
So!! What the heck, I count "Lost Classics" as a quest.
Just one I didn't know I was on. 😉
There was also an ad for Disneyworld having "The Twilight Zone Tower Of Terror" ride.
I half wonder if this special didn't exist as a commercial for that.
Oh, capitalism; you so crazy. 🙄
Also, an ad for "The Crow" when it was new!
Then!!!
We get to the 00's reboot, and that was hosted by Forest Whitaker.
I don't remember much about it, except they did a sequel to "It's A Good Life" with grownup Billy Mumy as the same character, but now grown up with a daughter.
"TZ: The Movie" gave the character a sugary happy ending; this one gave him a dark villain happy ending. 😆
Then the 2019-20 version, hosted by Jordan Peele...which is stuck behind a streaming paywall, because fuck the future.
😒
So!! Next one will likely be 2040, and be a hologram, or beamed dream telepathy, or a drugged piece of candy.
😏😉
So!! That's all the direct incarnations, and side attractions.
Now, the songs!!
Now, all the guest stars!!!
Well, not all; I trimmed it down to ones that link to other things I reviewed
I had to make some punishing cuts.
And even then, it's a honkin' chunk.
Listen to the songs while you peruse....
60's Zone guest stars.
Roddy McDowall (Fright Night, original Apes movies)
Ron Howard (Happy Days, Director; Night Shift, Willow)
Olan Soule (70's-80's animated Batman)
William Shatner (Star Trek)
Art Carney (Honeymooners, Star Wars Holiday Special)
John Fiedler (Star Trek, Winnie The Pooh (Piglet!!))
Bill Mumy (Lost In Space, TZ:The Movie, 00's Zone)
John Astin (Addams Family, Batman, Return Of The Killer Tomatoes)
Peter Falk (Columbo, Princess Bride)
Leonard Nimoy (Star Trek, Transformers The Movie)
Dabbs Greer (Little House On The Prairie, Green Mile)
Bill Bixby (Hulk, Magician, Courtship Of Eddie's Father, My Favorite Martian)
James Doohan (Star Trek)
Julie Newmar (Batman (Catwoman))
Telly Savalas (Kojak, Alice, Carol Burnett Show)
Mickey Rooney (Rankin/Bass Santa-verse, Carol Burnett, squillions of movies)
June Foray (Squillions of cartoons)
George Takei (Star Trek, Rodan)
Peter Mark Richman (Jason Takes Manhattan!)
Night Gallery guest stars.
Ossie Davis (Bubba Ho-Tep)
Larry Hagman (I Dream of Jeannie, Beware! The Blob)
Diane Keaton (Annie Hall, Reds, terrible fucking rom-coms)
Al Lewis (Munsters, horror host)
Phyllis Diller (Mad Monster Party, Carol Burnett)
Vincent Price (Horror God, Carol Burnett)
Adam West (Batman)
Orson Welles (Citizen Kane, Transformers The Movie)
Lindsay Wagner (Bionic Woman!)
Cesar Romero (Batman (Joker))
Carl Reiner (Dick Van Dyke Show, Rob's dad)
Steve Lawrence (Carol Burnett)
Rene Auberjonois (DS9, MASH movie, squillions of cartoons)
Edward G. Robinson (Little Caesar, Soylent Green)
Zsa Zsa Gabor (NOES: Dream Warriors)
Patrick Macnee (Waxwork, Superforce)
Brock Peters (To Kill A Mockingbird, Star Trek 6)
Cameron Mitchell (Hulk: Goodbye, Eddie Cain)
Burl Ives (Rankin/Bass Santa-verse)
Chuck Connors (The Rifleman, Werewolf)
Sixth Sense guest stars.
William Shatner (Star Trek)
The Movie guest stars.
Dan Aykroyd (Ghostbusters, Blues Brothers)
Vic Morrow (See above)
Scatman Crothers (The Shining, Jokebook)
Bill Mumy (Lost In Space, 60's Zone, 00's Zone)
John Lithgow (Stay tuned for his TIL)
80's Zone guest stars.
Annie Potts (Corvette Summer, Ghostbusters, Designing Women, Young Sheldon)
James Cromwell (See his TIL)
Adrienne Barbeau (See Archie-verse)
Sherman Hemsley (See Archie-verse)
Jonathan Frakes (Star Trek TNG, director)
Steve Railsback (The Stuntman)
John de Lancie (Star Trek TNG)
Frances McDormand (Fargo, Aeon Flux)
Lori Petty (Tank Girl, Freddy's Nightmares, A League Of Their Own)
Terry Farrell (Star Trek DS9, Hellraiser 3)
George Wendt (Cheers, House)
William Atherton (Ghostbusters, Real Genius)
Eddie Albert (Green Acres, The Demon Murder Case)
Amazing Stories guest stars.
Bronson Pinchot (Perfect Strangers, The Langoliers)
Dom DeLuise (Spaceballs)
Charlie Sheen (The Wraith)
David Rappaport (Time Bandits)
Forest Whitaker (00's Zone host, Rogue One, Black Panther)
Dick Cavett (NOES: Dream Warriors)
Tim Robbins (Howard The Duck, Shawshank Redemption)
Paul Bartel (Eating Raul)
Mary Woronov (Eating Raul)
John Lithgow (Stay tuned for his TIL)
Danny DeVito (Batman Returns)
Rhea Perlman (Cheers, Taxi)
Jon Cryer (Superman 4, Supergirl)
Tim Russ (Start Trek: Voyager)
Frank Welker (Gremlins, squillions of cartoons)
"Weird Al" Yankovic (UHF, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story)
Lost Classics guest stars.
Jack Palance (Dan Curtis's Dracula, Batman '89)
00s Zone...
Y'know...aside from Billy Mumy, I don't really care.
Ditto 2019-20.
And, DONE! Phew!!
*Collapses*
2 comments:
You anywhere near Caribou, Maine?
http://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/1jxbsrh/americas_going_to_party_like_its_1933/
Fortunately, no. For a few minutes, I thought the editor of the paper, David Deschesne, was the same guy as a local roofer who bombards TV with his ads. Nope. Phew. Turns out we have a lot of Dave Deschesnes-es.
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