Movies - Twilight Zone: The Movie

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	Movies - Twilight Zone: The Movie

Twilight Zone: The Movie was a 1983 movie produced by Steven Spielberg as a theatrical version of The Twilight Zone, a long-running early TV series. It starred Dan Aykroyd, Albert Brooks, Vic Morrow, John Lithgow, and others.

The film remade three classic episodes and included one original story. John Landis directed the prologue and the first segment, Spielberg directed the second, Joe Dante the third, and George Miller directed the final segment.

The film's musical score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith.

Tagline: You're travelling through another dimension. A dimension, not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Next stop, The Twilight Zone!

Synopsis

Prologue

In what could be considered one of the film's most memorable moments is the film's opening which starts off with a driver (Albert Brooks) and a hitchhiker (Dan Aykroyd) driving through the mountains very late at night, singing along to Creedence Clearwater Revival's Midnight Special on the radio, which goes tragically dead at the time and provides the hitchhiker an opportunity to say to his driver "Do you want to see something really scary?" before unleashing his secret that he was a monster.

First segment

The only "original" segment was the first, directed by Landis. A racist businessman (Vic Morrow) is inexplicably transported in time, being confused with a Jew in Nazi-occupied France, an African American at a Ku Klux Klan rally in the Deep South, and as Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. It is loosely based on the original Twilight Zone episode "A Quality of Mercy". The segment has a truncated feel to it, even without knowing the tragedy that occurred during its filming (see below).

Second segment

Remake of Kick the Can, directed by Spielberg. An old man (Scatman Crothers) arrives in a retirement home and makes the residents become magically young.

Third segment

Remake of It's a Good Life, directed by Dante. A woman (Kathleen Quinlan) gives a ride to a boy (Jeremy Licht) finds herself the newest member of his "family" (Kevin McCarthy, Patricia Barry, William Schallert and Nancy Cartwright) of people, who are really imprisoned by the boy's all too real imagination. It is interesting to note that the ending of the movie version was changed to a happier version than that of the tv version (in the movie, the boy is convinced to stop being mean, while in the show he continues to be bad and kills the person who rises up against him).

Fourth segment

Remake of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, directed by Miller. A passenger of an airline (John Lithgow) starts seeing a gremlin spoiling the airplane's engines and panics, but no one believes him.

Epilogue

The end of the fourth segment connects with the character from the prologue.

Helicopter Accident

The making of the movie had tragic consequences that overshadowed the film itself. During the filming of a segment directed by John Landis on July 23, 1982, actor Vic Morrow and child actors Myca Dinh Le (aged 7) and Renee Shin-Yi Chen (aged 6) died in an accident involving a helicopter. The accident led to legal action against the filmmakers that lasted nearly a decade, and changed the regulations involving children working on movie sets at night and during special effects-heavy scenes. As a result of the tragedy, one second assistant director had his name removed from the credits and replaced with the pseudonymous Alan Smithee. Another unfortunate result of this tragedy was the end of the friendship between director Landis and producer Spielberg.

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