What is your favorite Twilight Zone episode?

[yung.carl.jung]

I reckon many of you have seen this classic show created by Rod Serling. To me, this is probably the best Tv-show ever created and I have watched my favorites many-a times.

I would love recommendations for The Outer Limits episodes, too, I haven't delved into that one too deeply.

Feel free to also discuss similiar series or movies in this thread: The Outer Limits, X-Files, Tales from the Crypt, Alfred Hitchcock Presents..

Just please don't talk about Twin Peaks. I forgot everything, so I'm rewatching it again

Now without further ado, let me start with my list:

5. The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

Beautiful depiction of how othering can lead to segregation and mistrust to panic and violence. I feel like this episode started a trope in Tv-series of similiar type.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734664/

4. It's a Good Life

This might be the second most well-known episode and certainly an obvious pick. It might have fathered lots of horror movies with children protagonists, but the one I am sure of is Children of the Corn. By the way, never watch that movie unless you want to have a good laugh. I saw all the sequels, some of the best time I've ever wasted!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734580/

3. The Midnight Sun

I felt like this episode had outstanding acting, very loveable characters and a setting which could make even the most coldhearted psychopath emphatic. The way the story leads you along, just to reveal the end is brilliantly done and the themes of the two opposites, hot and cold are juxtaposed in a clever way.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734660/

2. Time Enough At Last

Probably the single most seminal Twilight Zone episode right there. I won't talk too much about the plot, I'll just say that I love the main protagonist, the setting, all the books and his passion for delving into them. Could have easily taken the first place, but that is reserved for a different one for now.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734683/

1. The Eye Of The Beholder

The name already tells you what this'll be about: Beauty standards, subjectivity, norms, perception.. What makes this episode so special is the genius lighting, the camera angles, the scenery and how the shots are set up; It basically is just a great piece of cinematographic work. Not only that but it's genuinely scary, the atmosphere is really unsettling, the nurses and doctors extremely alienating. A must see.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734568/

That concludes it, how about your favorites?

 

[schlaufuchs]

I like the one about gold robbers who freeze themselves to wait out the heat, then they wake up and kill each other over the gold, only to find in the future gold is worthless.

 

[rah]

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet with William Shatner.
Not the most thought provoking one always one of my favorites.

I was quite young when this first aired.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet with William Shatner.
Not the most thought provoking one always one of my favorites.

I was quite young when this first aired.

Let's be honest here, that spooky face in the window can only ever be topped by the master of distortion David Lynch himself.

Though not that I think back on it, the one thing that scared me worse than the scene behind the garbage bin in Mullholland Dr. was the incredibly weird blo wjob with a bear mask in The Shining. That actually gave me nightmares.

 

[rah]

I was around 10 when these started airing. Many of them scared the devil out of me.

 

[whyidie]

Feel free to also discuss similiar series or movies in this thread: The Outer Limits, X-Files, Tales from the Crypt, Alfred Hitchcock Presents..

Since you enjoyed X-Files I would recommend watching Fringe if you haven't already. More focused on the (some of it barely qualifies as fringe) science than the social aspects. Doesn't dive into the topics (not even the scientific ones) with the same focus as Twilight Zone, but does at least provide an interesting jumping off point.

 

[Kyriakos]

I haven't watched any of the original series episodes, although i know of a couple. Eg "To serve man"

I used to watch Friday the 13nth (the series, not the movies, non related), and Tales from the Crypt, but the latter was way too cheesy. I don't recall much of the former either, though. I was 8 years old and was watching it on Thursday night, and remember an episode about one surviving the electric chair, and the title theme.

Re X files, i remember some episodes, and was watching it, but on and off. The one with the person who didn't have ears and was eating other people, was pretty bleak. I generally liked the cryptozoa episodes.

 

[tetley]

It's not like I've seen a lot of Twilight Zone and I'm picking out the best of the best, but:

1) I remember an episode where 3 or 4 astronauts started vanishing one-by-one, and it was like they had never existed. Made you think what it would be like if you "died" by having everything about you erased. Your parents never knew you, nothing. Freaky.

2) Twilight Zone the movie, the moment where the guy was zapped into the cartoon. He lasted all of about 15 seconds before he got scarfed up by some evil clown.

3) Twilight Zone the 80's version, where this guy drowns his partner on a fishing trip in order to have an affair with his wife. And then something weird happens with space/time, the dead guy is back, and he ends up drowning the other guy on the same fishing trip.

4) Twilight Zone the ride at Hollywood Studios. It's the only semi-strenuous ride in the park.

 

[Berzerker]

The Mighty Casey

the one with Sebastion Cabot as the devil hosting a recently deceased gangster who is convinced he's in heaven

 

[CELTICEMPIRE]

The Obsolete Man is really good.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I completely forgot about the Obsolete Man! That one had some of the most stellar acting and Burgess Meredith is absolutely genius in it. I also dig the heavy 1984 vibes, the design of the court room.. That one is just flawless.