The Twilight Zone excelled in telling tales of terror, exploring the darkest aspects of human existence in myriad ways. To celebrate the Halloween season, we’re counting down the 31 most frightening and unsettling moments from The Twilight Zone, one for each day of October. We’ll be revisiting some of the episodes we’ve already covered and looking ahead to episodes from the final three seasons of the series. -JP
#28 - A Murderous Impulse, from “In His Image,” season four, episode 103
Written
by Charles Beaumont, directed by Perry Lafferty, starring George Grizzard
Charles Beaumont was the series writer
most concerned with the internal factors of perception. How does our mind make
sense of reality? What would happen if our senses began to fail us, if we were
unable to differentiate between dream and reality? Over and over, Beaumont
explored these questions in a series of nightmarish episodes of existential
terror. After the most shocking opening sequence in the entire series, Rod
Serling tells us: “What you have just witnessed could be the end of a
particularly terrifying nightmare. It isn’t. It’s the beginning.” The allusion
to a dream is no coincidence. Though Beaumont goes on to give us a modern
science fiction riff on the Frankenstein story, what he is really exploring
with “In His Image” is what he began exploring way back in the first season
with “Perchance to Dream.” How do we know we are who we think we are? How do we
know that we are really awake? How reliable is our perception of the world
around us? Out of this Beaumont created one of the most violent and unsettling
episodes of the fourth season, one that still retains its power to shock and
provoke. The episode is also a triumph for George Grizzard. The Emmy and Tony
Award-winning actor here displays an impressive range of dramatic skills.
Read our full review of "In His Image" here.
Read our full review of "In His Image" here.
Trivia:
-Charles Beaumont’s
original short story was first published under the title “The Man Who Made
Himself” in the February, 1957 issue of Imagination
Science Fiction. The story was collected as “In His Image” in Beaumont’s
1958 story collection Yonder: Stories of
Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Since I grew up watching TZ in syndication and the hour-long episodes were rarely shown, I don't know them nearly as well as the half-hour episodes. Your summary makes me want to track this one down and watch it again. George Grizzard can really come across as odd on screen, can't he?
ReplyDeleteHe certainly can, and that quality lends itself well to this episode. The fourth season is wildly uneven but there are some gems in there. This is one of them and one of the most bizarre fantasies the show ever presented.
DeleteThe fourth season is a mixed bag of stuff but there are a few episodes that are definitely worth watching. The hour format gave the season a very different atmosphere and it made the episodes, even the good ones, feel as if they belonged to a different show. "In His Image," along with Beaumont's other classic, "Miniature," and Matheson's "Death Ship" would probably make up my top three for the season.
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