 |
| Doris Richards (Emily McLaughlin) warns her husband Alan (John Dehner) not to venture outside. |
“The Jungle”
Season Three, Episode 77
Original
Air Date: December 1, 1961
Cast:
Alan
Richards: John Dehner
Chad
Cooper: Walter Brooke
Doris
Richards: Emily McLaughlin
Templeton:
Hugh Sanders
Hardy:
Howard Wright
Sinclair:
Donald Foster
Vagrant:
Jay Adler
Taxi
Driver: Jay Overholts
Zamba
the Lion
Crew:
Writer:
Charles Beaumont (based on his story)
Director:
William Claxton
Producer:
Buck Houghton
Associate
Producer: Del Reisman
Production
Manager: Ralph W. Nelson
Director
of Photography: George T. Clemens
Art
Direction: George W. Davis and Phil
Barber
Set
Decoration: H. Web Arrowsmith
Assistant
Director: E. Darrell Hallenbeck
Editor:
Jason H. Bernie
Story
Consultant: Richard McDonagh
Sound:
Bill Edmondson and Franklin Milton
Casting:
Stalmaster-Lister
Music:
Stock
Animal
Handler: Ralph Helfer
And Now, Mr. Serling:
“Next
week on The Twilight Zone we once again borrow the talents of Mr.
Charles Beaumont, who’s written a script especially for us called ‘The Jungle.’
Now, this is designed for the reasonably impressionable amongst you who find
nothing to laugh about when somebody mentions the words ‘black magic.’ Mr. John
Dehner stars in another small excursion into the darker regions of the
imagination. Next week, ‘The Jungle’.”
Rod Serling’s Opening Narration:
“The
carcass of a goat, a dead finger, a few bits of broken glass and stone, and Mr.
Alan Richards, a modern man of a modern age, hating with all his heart
something in which he cannot believe, and preparing, although he doesn’t know
it, to take the longest walk of his life, right down to the center of The Twilight Zone.”
Summary:
While
looking through his wife’s jewelry case for a missing cufflink, Alan Richards
comes across a startling array of primitive magical artifacts, including a dead
human finger. He confronts his wife with the items. She tells him they are for
protection against a curse leveled at them by a village shaman while they were
staying in Africa. Alan is working on a hydro-electric project for an American
company that will disrupt the ecosystem of the African jungle and they have
only recently returned to New York City. Calling his wife foolish and superstitious to
believe in such things, especially here in America, Alan burns the items in
the fireplace.
His
wife becomes downtrodden and depressed, resigned to the fate she believes will
befall them now that Alan has destroyed their magical protection. Alan must
attend a night meeting with other members of his company. “You won’t come
back,” his wife tells him. “Don’t open the door.” Alan ignores her warning and opens
the door. Lying in the doorway is the sacrificial body of a dead goat.
At
the meeting, Alan is asked about the response from the local population in
Africa to their project. Alan tells the other men the grim truth: the local population
is angry and has cursed everyone associated with the project with a slow and
painful death. The other men laugh at this but Alan quickly checks their
laughter. He points out an aspect of each man’s character that draws a parallel
to the very superstition they ridicule; from a rabbit’s foot to a belief in
astrology to knocking on wood, each man puts weight in some superstitious
belief.
Alan
joins a co-worker for a drink at a bar after the meeting. They wind up
discussing superstitions. Alan becomes agitated when discussing his wife’s
behavior following their return from Africa. Seeing how disturbed Alan is
becoming, his friend suggests that only somebody who actually believed in the
curse would be so disturbed by it. Alan finds a lion’s tooth in his coat,
presumably placed there for protection by his wife. He places it down on the
bar and forgets it as he leaves.
Outside,
his car won’t start. His friend has already driven away and nobody remains within
the closed and locked bar. It is very late at night and the street is eerily
deserted. As Alan peers through the window of the bar, we again see the lion’s
tooth left there, the final piece of magical protection Alan had remaining to
him.
A
taxi pulls up and offers a ride. Alan gladly accepts. They drive a block and
then stop for a traffic light. The driver does not move the car, even when the
light turns to green. Alan tries to talk to him and gets no response. He
reaches out and touches the driver. The driver is physically unresponsive and
falls sideways along the front seat. Alarmed, Alan gets out and goes around to
the front to check on the driver. The man appears to be dead. Alan rushes away.
As
he walks down the street he begins to hear the sound of rhythmic, pounding
drums and animal sounds as he heard on the phone. The sounds begin faintly but slowly grow in
volume. Alan is confront by a tramp who asks for money. Alan gives the
man a little money. He asks the tramp if he can also hear the sound of the
drums and the animals but the tramp says that he cannot hear any sounds. Alan
offers additional money if the tramp will walk with him on the way home. Alan must
walk through a park and he doesn’t like the look of the darkness and the
closeness of the trees. A screeching animal sound draws Alan’s attention away
and when he looks back the tramp has vanished. Alan is utterly alone on the
street.
Suddenly,
he hears a sound from behind the bedroom door. It is the low, distinctive growl
of a large cat. Cautiously, Alan approaches and pushes open the door. A large male lion is on the bed beside the body of his dead wife.
The
lion leaps from the bed to attack. Alan only has time for a single scream
before the animal is upon him.
Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
“Some
superstitions kept alive by the long night of ignorance have their own special
power. You’ll hear of it through a jungle grapevine in a remote corner of The Twilight Zone.”
Commentary:
I. "The Jungle"
“Suddenly
it was there. On foxfeet, invisibly, it had crept, past all the fences and
traps he had laid, past all the barriers. And now it sat inside his mind, a
part of him, like his pulse, like the steady beat of his heart.”
-Charles
Beaumont, “The Jungle”
 |
Illustration by Leo Summers for
Charles Beaumont's "The Jungle"
|
A
casual glance at the episodes preceding Charles Beaumont’s
“The Jungle” shows a number which share these essential characteristics. "Mirror Image," “The After Hours,” “Nightmare as a Child,” “Judgment Night,” “And When the Sky
Was Opened,” and Beaumont’s “Perchance to Dream” and “Shadow Play,” all
concern protagonists who are stalked by a supernatural (or preternatural) force. These episodes typically end in one of two ways: psychological
salvation resulting from an awakening awareness, or psychological (and perhaps physical)
trauma from an inability to escape. The latter ending is
often tied up in the features of supernatural justice. These episodes are also tales of psychological horror in which the
deterioration of the mind is explored equally to the deterioration of the body.
The
episode with which “The Jungle” is most interestingly compared is
Richard Matheson’s masterpiece of psychological persecution from the second
season, “Nick of Time.” In Matheson’s story, the tyranny of superstitious
belief is revealed to be a self-made prison, one wholly unnecessary
to be suffered by the modern, enlightened man, whereas Beaumont is suggesting
something different in “The Jungle.” In "The Jungle" it is dangerous,
perhaps fatal, to deny the shadowy magic which lies behind superstition. Such
things are given power by fear and belief, and no amount of
knowledge or scientific insight can protect against the machinations of the
supernatural.
The
figure of the psychoanalyst is frequently present in Beaumont’s fiction and
although there is no psychoanalyst in “The Jungle,” the protagonist,
Alan Richards, assumes the role when, during the board meeting scene, he
systematically reveals the irrational beliefs of each of the supposedly balanced,
successful business men. If these men represent the enlightenment brought about
by mass industrialization and scientific progress, then why is it that each man still covets some aspect of an old superstition? What does
this tell us about modern man and woman and his or her relationship to their distant, less enlightened ancestors who explained aspects of their world by supernatural means?
The
psychoanalyst is a recurring symbol in Beaumont’s Twilight Zone episodes as well (“Perchance to Dream,” “Person or
Persons Unknown,” "Miniature") and typically represents the futility of science when
faced with the supernatural. It is rare that a doctor or authority figure of any sort is able
to help Beaumont’s doomed protagonists.
Beaumont’s
original story, first published in the December, 1954 issue of If: Worlds of Science Fiction bears little
resemblance to the episode crafted from it. The primary reason for this was
production cost inherent in creating the future world of Beaumont’s story. In
this future setting the elite members of the world’s population destroy the
jungles of Kenya in order to create a self-sustainable city structure. To visualize
this futuristic city would simply have cost too much for the production. Most of the show’s
futuristic designs take on a cost-efficient, minimalist approach, as evidenced by Beaumont’s later story adaptation, “Number Nine Looks Just Like You” and other episodes such as "The Obsolete Man," “The Trade-Ins,” and “The Lateness of the Hour.”
The
entirety of Beaumont’s original story takes place in Africa. The protagonist of
the story is Richard Austin and he is the designer of a city, Mbarara, built to house half a million select members of the world’s population. The
world has become vastly over-populated and the jungles of Africa are
the only areas which remain untouched by this over-population. Consequently, it
is the area which Austin and his colleagues choose as the location of their
expansive, futuristic city. As a result, the inhabitants of the villages which
border the jungle fight back against the invaders who have leveled
their territory. Though the inhabitants fight Austin’s project in a
traditional manner, through the weapons of warfare, they also fight with
aspects of magic. The pre-population of Austin’s city, those who arrive
to prepare for the arrival of others, are inflicted with a terrible,
degenerative disease which causes horrible suffering, as
indicted by its crude nickname, “jungle rot.” Though Austin steadfastly refuses
to believe that the primitive rituals practiced by the natives have anything to
do with the epidemic, he cannot long continue to deny it when his wife falls
victim to the disease and lies on the verge of a horrible death.
Austin
leaves his heavily protected apartment home to confront the medicine man and
the villagers who have opposed the construction of the city.
Beaumont uses many traditional symbols of African magic (drums, ritualistic
dancing, miniature effigies, the casting of bones, etc.) to provide a jarring
juxtaposition to the sleek futurism of Mbarara.
The
final third of Beaumont’s original story is the portion which most resembles
the finished episode. After being turned away by the medicine man, Austin walks
home through the silent, abandoned streets of the maze-like city, pursued at
every step by the threatening sounds of tribal drums and predatory animals. Austin
arrives home to find a lion feeding upon his wife.
The
story is not one of Beaumont’s best, overly long and written with uncharacteristically dense passages of exposition. It
does, however, offer a number of interesting ideas, most of which Beaumont
carries over into his adaptation. One which he was forced to abandon was the
idea of over-population. Beaumont presents an interesting moral dilemma in his
treatment of the subject as he illustrates a future world in which population
problems are handled by government purges, forcing Austin and his colleagues to
build their city not only to escape over-population but also the waves of
government-mandated executions. It is interesting to note that the idea of
primitive magic, and jungle magic in particular, was prominent in supernatural
fiction of the 1940s and 1950s, especially in the pulp magazines and pre-code
horror comics of the time. Much of it, unfortunately, was characterized by the racial stereotyping too common at the time, but some of the more successful treatments of theme, by writers such as Ray Bradbury and Fritz Leiber, proved to be important influences upon Beaumont’s original story and later adaptation.
II. "The Veldt"
“.
. . my eyes focused upon a scene, a large house with two people in it. I saw a
flight of vultures on a blazing flesh sky, I saw yellow lions, and I heard
voices.”
-Ray
Bradbury, “Prologue: The Illustrated Man”
“The
lions were finished with their red feast.”
-Ray Bradbury, “The Veldt”
 |
Illustration by Jim Burns for
Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man
|
Beaumont was a
teenager when he met Bradbury in a Los Angeles bookstore years before. At the time Bradbury was publishing horror stories in Weird Tales, stories which would eventually
comprise Bradbury’s first book, Dark
Carnival (1947). When
Beaumont began to write his own stories, Bradbury read the stories and
gave Beaumont constructive criticism. In the early 1950s, Beaumont began
regularly selling his material to the pulps and science fiction digest magazines. By the end of that decade, much
like Bradbury before him, Beaumont had largely graduated to the “slick
magazines” (Playboy, Esquire, etc.)
and developed a style that was distinctly his own. The early stories, however,
clearly show Bradbury’s influence. An early story such as “Elegy” (published
in 1953 and adapted for the first season of The
Twilight Zone), in which three astronauts land on a planet that looks like
a pastoral version of Earth only to discover the planet’s deadly secret, in
many ways resembles Bradbury’s famous 1948 story “Mars is Heaven!” (collected
in The Martian Chronicles (1950) as
“The Third Expedition”).
 |
Illustration by Al Parker for
"The World the Children Made"
|
On the genesis of “The
Veldt,” Bradbury wrote: “What if you could create a world within a room . . .
and introduce a family to that room where its walls might operate on their
psyches and deliver forth nightmares?” (“Dancing, So as Not to Be Dead,” introduction to The Illustrated Man, 1999). "The Veldt" illustrates the direction in which the supernatural
story was headed in the middle part of the 20th century. Many writers
of supernatural fiction were reevaluating the traditional Gothic story in the
wake of the horrors of the Second World War, fears of developing technologies, and the increasing
industrialization of the modern American city.
In “The Veldt,” a story of the near future, a family purchases a fully automated home. In this
home they install a nursery in which virtually anything can be simulated for a
child’s enjoyment through marvels of sensory manipulation. As the family
becomes more dependent upon the automated home, the nursery begins to replace
the parents in the eyes of the children. The result of the room’s influence on
the children’s psyche is that their increasingly aggressive nature is reflected
by an African veldt, in which predatory animals stalk their prey. Soon, the
room responds only to the children’s demands and assumes a preternaturally
life-like effect. When the parents threaten to permanently shut down the room,
the children’s murderous impulses fuel the room’s occult power to devastating
effect. The character who is left to sort through the mess is, naturally, the
family’s psychologist.
The primary link
between Bradbury’s story and Beaumont’s “The Jungle” is the image of Africa as
infused with a magic that can supersede all the efforts of science to combat
superstition. The lion is the central image upon which both stories conclude.
“The Veldt” was one of
the first stories that firmly pushed Bradbury out of pulp territory and into
the realm of mainstream literature. It was a hugely influential story on the
development of the type of science fantasy which was regularly exhibited on The Twilight Zone. The story would go on
to become one of Bradbury’s most renowned stories, anthologized dozens of times, and
one in which he derived a significant amount of mileage. The story was presented
on radio by NBC for Dimension X in
1951 from a very faithful script adaptation by veteran radio writer Ernest
Kinoy. Kinoy’s script was reused, with an added happy ending, four years later
for NBC’s science fiction radio series X
Minus One. Bradbury adapted the story as a one-act play in 1963 and
presented it at the Coronet Theatre in Los Angeles in October, 1964 as one
third of The World of Ray Bradbury, directed
by Charles Rome Smith. The other two
thirds were comprised of Bradbury’s “The Wonderful
Ice Cream Suit” and “To the Chicago Abyss." "The Veldt" was one of three Bradbury stories adapted for the 1969 anthology film The Illustrated Man (along with "The Long Rain" and "The Last Night of the World") and Bradbury later adapted the story
into a teleplay for The Ray Bradbury
Theater. One wonders how Bradbury would have adapted the story for The Twilight Zone.
III. "Conjure Wife"
“The
room seemed to darken. There was a faint, mighty roaring in his ears, as of
motors far underground. He had the sense of standing suddenly naked and unarmed
before something menacingly alien.”
-Fritz Leiber, Conjure Wife
 |
| Illustration by Gene Colon & John Romita for Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife |
Though
he is probably better known today for his science fiction and heroic fantasy,
Leiber devoted a great amount of time to the tale of supernatural horror, particularly during
his formative years as a writer. He would occasionally return to the form,
especially late in his career with the influx of periodicals inspired by the
pulp era of the horror story (Whispers,
Fantasy Tales, etc.). Leiber was a correspondent of H.P. Lovecraft, who
spurred the younger man to write his own stories. Leiber never fell under the
influence of Lovecraft’s literary style, however, as did so many of Lovecraft’s
acolytes, and always seemed more interested in juxtaposing the traditional
aspects of the horror story with a decidedly modern setting. Leiber was instrumental in developing the recognizable
traits of the modern urban fantasy story and the supernatural fiction which
grew out of his work, fiction informed by the terrible events of the Second
World War, eschewed much of the Gothic trappings of the supernatural fiction
which came before in order to examine the characteristics of a
persecuting supernatural occurrence in the 20th century.
During
the 1940s, in magazines such as Unknown and Weird Tales, Leiber re-imagined the
archetypes of the Gothic story in a modern setting. These stories were greatly influential and many are now considered masterpieces of the form. These include Leiber’s innovative takes on
ghosts (“Smoke Ghost”), witchcraft (Conjure Wife), werewolves (“The
Hound”), and
vampires (“The Girl with the Hungry Eyes”). The best
of Leiber’s early macabre tales are found in Night’s Black Agents.
For his adaptation of “The Jungle,” Beaumont
borrowed heavily from both Conjure Wife and
“Smoke Ghost.” Soon afterwards, Beaumont collaborated with Richard Matheson to adapt Leiber’s Conjure Wife into a screenplay. Both
writers, when deciding what property to adapt, came to the same conclusion that
Leiber’s novel was the best modern fantasy of the time. The resulting film was
titled Burn, Witch, Burn in the U.S. (Night of the Eagle in the U.K.) and
released in 1962, the second of three films to be taken from Leiber’s novel after 1944’s Weird
Woman, starring Lon Chaney, Jr., and followed by 1980's Witches’ Brew.
Both
Conjure Wife and “Smoke Ghost” are
psychologically charged tales of supernatural persecution. In Conjure Wife, a sociology professor
discovers that virtually every woman in his small college town, including his
wife, is a practicing witch. The women use their magical powers to influence
university politics. Like Beaumont’s story, the husband in Conjure Wife also finds items of primitive magic in his wife’s
belonging and burns the items to his detriment. What follows greatly mirrors
the action of “The Jungle” in that the husband, now unprotected, is the victim
of an onslaught of magical attacks. Leiber generally sheds the African
influences and uses the stone image of an eagle in place of Beaumont’s lion.
Leiber’s
“Smoke Ghost” presents us again with the prevailing image of the psychoanalyst
(Leiber took a psychology degree himself in 1932 from the University of
Chicago) as unable to help the persecuted individual. “Smoke Ghost” is one of the most innovative and effective ghost stories of the 20th century
and still manages to unnerve the sympathetic reader 75
years after it was first published.
Leiber
was one of a select handful of writers (along with Bradbury, Robert Bloch, and Theodore
Sturgeon) who strongly influenced the Southern California Group of writers. “Smoke Ghost” exemplifies what many of
these younger writers were, a decade later, attempting to replicate in their
own work. Some passages from Leiber’s stories read like precursors to later
work by the Group. One example is this from “Smoke Ghost”: “. . . then
an opaque monstrous form leaping out from the roof in a parabolic swoop-an
unmentionable face pressed close against the window, smearing it with wet coal
dust-huge paws fumbling sloppily at the glass.” This passage could nearly have
been lifted from Richard Matheson’s famous 1962 story “Nightmare at 20,000
Feet,” which was memorably adapted for the fifth season of The Twilight Zone. In Matheson’s story, a man is terrorized by a
supernatural being on an airplane. In Leiber’s story, the protagonist is
terrorized by a supernatural being on an elevated train. Like the action in “The Jungle,” the doomed protagonist of “Smoke
Ghost” experiences a physical and mental feeling of utter isolation, despite
the fact that he is a resident of a large city. The city itself seems to work
against his efforts to connect with other people who may provide salvation from
the supernatural force.
IV. A Man Walks Home Alone At Night
“.
. . mankind had once again spawned a ghost world, and that superstition once
more ruled.”
-Fritz Leiber, “Smoke Ghost”
The standout sequence in “The Jungle” is when Alan Richards makes his way home through an eerily deserted city in the middle of the night. To achieve the effectiveness of this sequence required the considerable skills of cinematographer George T. Clemens, sound engineers Bill Edmondson and Franklin Milton, editor Jason Bernie, and, perhaps most importantly, actor John Dehner and director William Claxton.
The
story presented in “The Jungle” could easily have fallen into laughable
territory and it was imperative that John Dehner play the role with absolute
seriousness to ground the fantastic nature of the episode in its realistic urban setting. Beaumont had very little time to
establish any logic to the supernatural element and was forced to
begin the episode with his main character displaying a dead finger to his wife, followed quickly by a dead goat in the doorway. It is easy to imagine how this could have crumbled in lesser hands.
Dehner
was more than capable of assuming the skeptical demeanor necessary for his
character. His long, expressive face perfectly displays the slow degeneration
of his character’s mental state until he arrives back at his apartment in a frenzy. By the time Dehner is bringing a drink to his lips with a
badly shaking hand, the physical and mental decline of the character is
convincingly complete. The wide, unbelieving expression on his face when
opening the bedroom door on an adult male lion is simply perfect. Dehner was
a talented character actor and showed impressive range in his three appearances
on The Twilight Zone. He played a
sympathetic character of authority in the first season episode “The Lonely,”
and displayed his talent for droll comedy in late fifth season episode “Mr.
Garrity and the Graves.”
Born
in Richmond, New York in 1915, Dehner established
himself professionally as a disc jockey, pianist, and an animator for Walt Disney
Studios before trying his hand at acting in the early 1940s. Dehner appeared
most frequently in western television programs, often as a villain, and amassed
over 250 film and television credits over his long career. His
distinctive baritone voice was heard on several radio programs in an equally long and
busy career, starring in such programs as Philip
Marlowe, Frontier Gentleman, and the radio version of Have Gun-Will Travel. He died on February 4, 1992 in Santa Barbara,
aged 76.
William
Claxton, not to be confused with the American photographer of the same
name, was a versatile television director who found a niche directing western
and frontier programs, turning in memorable work on shows such as Bonanza (1962-1973) and Little House on the Prairie (1974-1981),
programs through which he developed a solid working relationship with actor
Michael Landon. Claxton later directed Landon in Highway to Heaven (1985), one of his final credits as director. Claxton
directed the cult 1972 film Night of the
Lepus, concerning giant rabbits on the rampage, and a memorable episode
of Boris Karloff’s Thriller, “The
Hollow Watcher.”
Claxton
displays an exceptional visual style in “The Jungle.” Alan Richards’s journey
through the city is a tensely staged sequence on par with the exceptional work
on display in similar episodes such as “The Hitch-Hiker” and “The After Hours.”
The perspective shot within the taxicab is a particular highlight of the
sequence. The staging of the physical action in accordance with the distinctive
sound effects was also expertly handled. “The Jungle” is arguably Claxton’s
finest work on the series, likely because it offered the finest material for
stylistic interpretation. Claxton does have the distinction of having
interpreted the work of the major writers on the series: Richard Matheson (“The
Last Flight”), Charles Beaumont (“The Jungle”), Rod Serling (“The Little
People”), and Ray Bradbury (“I Sing the Body Electric!”), only missing out on one of George Clayton Johnson’s efforts. Claxton was born
on October 22, 1914 in Los Angeles and died in Santa Monica on February 11,
1996, aged 81. His last directing credit was for the television movie Bonanza: The Next Generation (1988).
“The
Jungle” remains an effectively eerie episode that uses the full spectrum of
sensory manipulation to set the viewer on
edge. In particular, the innovative use of sound and the wonderfully creepy deserted
city are highlights of the show’s third season. With “The Jungle,” Charles
Beaumont solidified himself as the show’s most psychologically incisive writer,
one interested equally in the existential effects of mental aberration and in
strictly physical horrors. He would continue his explorations of these themes
in outstanding later episodes such as “Person or Persons Unknown,” “In His
Image,” and “Miniature.”
Grade:
B
Notes:
-William
Claxton directed three additional episodes: “The Last Flight” from season one,
and “The Little People” and “I Sing the Body Electric” from season three.
-John
Dehner also appeared in “The Lonely” from season one, and “Mr. Garrity and the
Graves” from season five.
-Walter
Brooke also appears in “A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain,” from season
five.
-Hugh
Sanders also appears in “Judgment Night,” from season one, and “Of Late I Think
of Cliffordville,” from season four.
-Jay
Adler also appears in “He’s Alive,” from season four.
-Howard
Wright also appears in “What’s in the Box,” from season five.
-“The
Jungle” was adapted as a Twilight
Zone Radio Drama starring Ed Begley, Jr.
-Charles
Beaumont’s original script for “The Jungle” is included in The Twilight Zone Scripts of Charles Beaumont, Volume
One (Gauntlet Press, 2004), edited by
Roger Anker.
-JP
