Twilight Zone: The Movie

Two men are in a car driving along a lonely country road late at night. The conversation turns to what episodes of The Twilight Zone they found most scary. The passenger then asks, "Do you want to see something really scary?" and says to pull over. He turns into a monster and attacks the driver.

Cast

• Albert Brooks as the Driver
• Dan Aykroyd as the Passenger

The film's narrator, Burgess Meredith, then recites the season 4 opening narration of The Twilight Zone:

You unlock this door with a key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension; a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, and a dimension of mind. You are moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You have just crossed over into The Twilight Zone.

"Time Out" is an original story, loosely based on the episodes "Deaths-Head Revisited" and "A Quality of Mercy."

The opening narration for the film's only original segment borrows from "What You Need" and "A Nice Place to Visit":

You're about to meet an angry man: Mr. William Connor, who carries on his shoulder a chip the size of the national debt. This is a sour man, a lonely man, who's tired of waiting for the breaks that come to others, but never to him. Mr. William Connor, whose own blind hatred is about to catapult him into the darkest corner of The Twilight Zone.

Bill Connor is bitter after being passed over for a promotion in favor of a Jewish co-worker. Drinking in a bar after work with his friends, Bill utters slurs towards Jewish people, black people and Asian people. A black man sitting nearby asks him to stop. Bill leaves the bar angrily, but when he walks outside, he finds himself in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. A pair of SS officers patrolling the streets interrogate him. Bill cannot answer satisfactorily since he does not speak German. A chase ensues, and Bill ends up on the ledge of a building, where he is shot at by the officers.

He falls from the ledge and lands in the rural US South during the 1950s, where a group of Ku Klux Klansmen see him as an African-American man, whom they are about to lynch. Bill vehemently tells them he is white, to no avail. While trying to escape, he jumps into a lake and surfaces in a jungle during the Vietnam War, being fired at by American soldiers, one of whom throws a grenade. Instead of killing him, the grenade launches him into occupied France again. There he is captured by the SS officers and put into an enclosed railroad freight car, along with Jewish prisoners. Bill sees the bar with his friends standing outside looking for him. He screams for help, but they cannot see him or the train as it pulls away.

Cast

It has been speculated that this segment was to end with Bill returning to his own time after redeeming himself by saving the lives of two Vietnamese children during a helicopter raid on their village, and the aforementioned scene was dropped due to the death of Morrow and two child actors during filming.

However, this has been contradicted by writer/director John Landis, who stated, "The episode ends the way it always ended, but it's missing a third of it because we decided not to use footage of the children."[6] When asked how the film changed from its initial conception after the accident, Landis replied, "The intercutting between the actions of the KKK and American GIs and the Vietcong and the Nazis became more and more frenetic as [Bill] tried to protect the children. Finally, the Nazis take the children away and shoot them and load him up on the train. We decided not to use any footage of the children. It was a very difficult situation. Do we keep it in the movie? ...And, ultimately, we decided it would be really outrageous to Vic Morrow if we just cut it out of the movie completely.[7] Landis has also said, "There are moments [in the segment] I think work well. When [Bill] is in the cattle car, and he looks back and you see his POV of the bar going by. I think that's an unsettling image."[8]

This segment also contains an inside joke from Landis. During the segment where Bill is in Vietnam, one American soldier says to another: "I told you guys, we shouldn't have shot Lieutenant Neidermeyer." This is a reference to the character of the same name in the film Animal House, which was also directed by Landis. At the end of Animal House, the viewers are told what later happened to each of the main characters; it states that Douglas Neidermeyer was, "killed in Vietnam by his own troops."[9]

The second segment is a remake of the episode "Kick the Can". The narrator starts with this monologue:

It is sometimes said that where there is no hope, there is no life. Case in point: the residents of Sunnyvale Rest Home, where hope is just a memory. But hope just checked into Sunnyvale, disguised as an elderly optimist, who carries his magic in a shiny tin can.

An old man named Mr. Bloom has just moved into Sunnyvale Retirement Home. He listens to the other elders reminisce about the joys they experienced in their youth. Bloom insists that being elderly should not, and need not, prevent them from enjoying life. He invites them to join him, later that night, for a game of kick the can. Leo Conroy objects, saying that they cannot engage in physical activity because they are all elderly.

While Mr. Conroy sleeps, Mr. Bloom gathers the rest of the residents outside and plays the game, during which they are transformed into childhood versions of themselves. They are ecstatic to be young again, engaging in activities they enjoyed long ago, but their thoughts soon turn to practical matters...such as where they will spend the night, since they will no longer be welcomed in the retirement home, and their families won't recognize them. They ask to be their true age again, and Mr. Bloom grants their wish...satisfied that, as with himself, their minds will remain young. Leo Conroy wakes up and notices that one resident, Mr. Agee, has opted to remain young. Conroy asks for Agee to take him along, but Agee tells him that such is impossible.

The next morning, Mr. Bloom finds Conroy kicking a can around the yard; clearly, like all the other Sunnyvale residents, he has changed his outlook on life. (Bloom breaks the fourth wall to assure the viewer that "He'll get it".) Bloom departs from Sunnyvale for another retirement home, to spread his good-natured magic among other senior citizens.

Cast

The third segment is a remake of the episode "It's a Good Life". The name of the main character Helen Foley is from the episode "Nightmare as a Child":

Portrait of a woman in transit: Helen Foley, age 27. Occupation: schoolteacher. Up until now, the pattern of her life has been one of unrelenting sameness, waiting for something different to happen. Helen Foley doesn't know it yet, but her waiting has just ended.

Helen Foley, traveling to a new job, visits a rural bar for directions. While talking to the owner, she witnesses Anthony—a young boy playing an arcade game (Tempest)—being harassed by a local trying to watch a boxing match. Helen comes to the boy's defense. As Helen leaves the bar, she backs into Anthony with her car in the parking lot, damaging his bicycle. Helen offers Anthony a ride home.

When Helen arrives with Anthony at home, she meets his family: Uncle Walt, sister Ethel, and mother and father. Anthony's family are excessively welcoming. Anthony starts to show Helen around the house, while the family rifles through Helen's purse and coat. There is a television set in every room showing old classic cartoons (mainly Looney Tunes, but also shown were Heckle and Jeckle's The Power of Thought and the Fleischer Brothers' Bimbo's Initiation). She comes to the room of another sister, Sara. Helen calls out to the girl, who is in a wheelchair and watching television, and gets no response. Anthony explains that Sara had been in an accident; Helen isn't able to see that the girl has no mouth.

Anthony announces that it is time for dinner, which consists of ice cream, candy apples, potato chips, and hamburgers topped with peanut butter. Confused at first at the family’s unconventional diet, Helen thinks that this is a birthday dinner for Anthony. Ethel complains at the prospect of another birthday; Anthony glares at her, and her plate flies out of her hands. Helen attempts to leave, but Anthony urges Helen to stay and see Uncle Walt's "hat trick". A top hat appears on top of the television set. Uncle Walt is very nervous about what could be in the hat, but he pulls out an ordinary rabbit. Anthony insists on an encore, and a large, mutant rabbit springs from the hat. As Helen attempts to flee, she spills the contents of her purse, and Anthony finds a note inside stating "Help us! Anthony is a monster!" When the family points the finger at Ethel, she reveals to Helen that they are not Anthony's real relatives; Anthony brought them to his house to be his surrogate family after he killed his parents, and presumably he is doing the same with Helen. In punishment for writing the note, Anthony puts Ethel into the television set where she is pursued and eaten by a cartoon monster (animated by Sally Cruikshank of Quasi at the Quackadero fame).[10][11]

Helen attempts to escape only to have the door blocked by a giant eye. Anthony vents his frustration at everyone being afraid of him. He makes the entire house disappear, taking himself and Helen outside the physical plane of existence. Anthony says that he sent his "family" back where they came from, since they didn't want to be with him. He cannot understand why everyone is unhappy with him, since he believes he provided for their every possible desire.

Helen offers to be Anthony's teacher, and help him find new uses for his power. After extracting a promise that she would never leave him, Anthony welcomes Helen's offer and makes her car reappear. As they drive through a desert landscape, meadows filled with bright flowers spring up alongside the road in the car's wake.

Cast

The fourth segment is a remake of the episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet". Its opening narration is borrowed, in part, from "In His Image":

What you're looking at could be the end of a particularly terrifying nightmare. It isn't. It's the beginning. Introducing Mr. John Valentine, air traveler. His destination: The Twilight Zone.

While flying through a violent thunderstorm, airline passenger John Valentine is in an airplane lavatory as he tries to recover from a panic attack due to a fear of flying. The flight attendants coax Valentine from the lavatory and back to his seat.

Valentine notices a hideous gremlin on the wing of the plane and begins to spiral into another severe panic. He watches as the creature wreaks havoc on the wing, damaging the plane's engine. Valentine finally snaps and attempts to break the window with an oxygen canister, but is wrestled to the ground by another passenger (an Air Marshall). Valentine takes the passenger's gun, shoots out the window (causing a breach in the pressurized cabin), and begins firing at the gremlin. This only serves to catch the attention of the gremlin, who rushes up to Valentine and destroys the gun. After they notice that the plane is landing, the gremlin grabs Valentine's face (covering it with slime), then simply scolds him for spoiling its fun by wagging its finger in his face. The creature leaps into the sky and flies away as the airplane begins its emergency landing.

The police, crew, and passengers write off Valentine as insane. However, the aircraft maintenance crew arrives and finds the damage to the plane's engines complete with claw marks, while a straitjacketed Valentine is carried off in an ambulance.

Cast

The ambulance driver is the car passenger from the prologue. The driver turns to Valentine and says "Heard you had a big scare up there, huh? Wanna see something really scary?" The scene fades out to a starry night sky accompanied by Rod Serling's opening monologue from the first season of The Twilight Zone:

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone.