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| Anne Henderson (Diana Hyland) gets a glimpse at her future. |
“Spur of the Moment”
Season Five, Episode 141
Cast:
Anne Henderson: Diana
Hyland
David Mitchell: Roger
Davis
Mrs. Henderson:
Marsha Hunt
Mr. Henderson: Philip
Ober
Robert Blake: Robert
Hogan
Reynolds: Jack Raine
Writer: Richard
Matheson
Director: Elliot
Silverstein
Producer: Burt Granet
Director of
Photography: Robert W. Pittack
Production Manager:
Ralph W. Nelson
Art Direction: George
W. Davis and Walter Holscher
Film Editor: Richard
Heermance
Set Decoration: Henry
Grace and Robert R. Benton
Assistant Director:
Charles Bonniwell, Jr.
Casting: Patricia
Rose
Music: Composed by
Rene Garriguenc; Conducted by Lud Gluskin
Sound: Franklin
Milton and Philip N. Mitchell
Mr. Serling’s
Wardrobe: Eagle Clothes
Filmed at MGM Studios
And Now, Mr. Serling:
“Next on The Twilight
Zone, the stalwart typewriter of Richard Matheson brings us a most intriguing
tale of riders, pale horses, and peeks into the future. It stars Diana Hyland
and it concerns itself with some very unlooked for and some unpredicted events.
It’s called ‘Spur of the Moment’ and it’s recommended for those of you who’d
like to take a look at the next page of the calendar before it’s time. On
Twilight Zone next, ‘Spur of the Moment.’”
Rod Serling Opening Narration:
“This is the face of terror. Anne Marie Henderson, eighteen years of age, her young existence suddenly marred by a savage and wholly unanticipated pursuit by a strange, nightmarish figure of a woman in black, who has appeared as if from nowhere and now, at driving gallop, chases the terrified girl across the countryside, as if she means to ride her down and kill her, and then suddenly and inexplicably stops to watch in malignant silence as her prey takes flight. Miss Henderson has no idea whatever as to the motive for this pursuit. Worse, not the vaguest notion regarding the identity of her pursuer. Soon enough, she will be given the solution to this twofold mystery, but in a manner far beyond her present capacity to understand, a manner enigmatically bizarre in terms of time and space - which is to say, an answer from... the Twilight Zone.”
Summary:
Anne Henderson, eighteen-years-old and the sole heir to a wealthy family, steps out into a bright summer day, dressed in white, ready for an afternoon outing on her white horse. After riding for several minutes she stops at the base of a hill where a woman, dressed in black, on a black horse, appears at the top of the hill. Her voice a deafening, primal sound, she screams Anne’s name and begins frantically down the hill. Terrified, Anne races toward the safety of her home, the woman in black close behind her. As Anne arrives at her family’s sprawling estate, the woman in black stops, takes a final look at her, and retreats.
Inside, Anne collapses into her fiancé’s arms. Her mother and father rush to her aid. She tells them about being chased by the mysterious woman. She thinks the woman wanted to kill her. Her father immediately gets on the phone to the authorities.
The doorbell rings. Standing at the door is a young man named David who is demanding to speak with Anne. Mr. Henderson refuses and an argument ensues. After his repeated attempts to get the young man to leave, Anne’s father reluctantly lets him speak to Anne, if only to convince him that she wants nothing to do with him. It is revealed that he and Anne have known each other their entire lives and for their entire lives they have dreamed of getting married. Anne’s father clearly disapproves and prefers her fiancé, Bob. Anne appears flustered and unsure of her preference. When she resists David’s pleading that she give him another chance, her father finally forces him to leave at gunpoint.
In the courtyard in front of the Henderson estate, the woman in black rides in and dismounts her horse. She opens the front door and steps inside. It’s Anne. But she is not the same Anne that was crying and frightened moments earlier. She is older and looks more defeated than frightened. The house feels emptier. Twenty-five years have passed since Anne was chase by the woman in black. Anne is now forty-three. She pours herself a drink and collapses into a chair. Her mother appears, telling her that an attorney has been trying to reach her. We learn that her father passed years ago and that she is in danger of losing their estate. She tells her mother that she was out riding and saw the ghost of her former self, eighteen years old. She reminds her of the day she arrived home in tears after being chased by the woman in black. She now realizes that she is the woman in black. She says she has seen her younger self several times but can never reach her. She wants to warn young Anne not to make the mistake that will ruin her life.
An angry man stumbles into the room. It’s David, Anne’s husband, drink in hand. He is older, bearded, worn. We learn that he has squandered Anne’s inheritance. Anne’s mother attempts to chastise him and he screams at her to leave. He sits close to Anne, mocking her sorrow. Childless, they have grown into desolate, joyless alcoholics who hate each other.
Flashback twenty-five years. The Henderson estate. It’s the same day as before, only now it is night. Anne is at her engagement party, her father’s doing. She stands outside, alone, staring at the night sky. She looks as if she is watching her life end right in front of her. She sees David in the distance and runs to him, leaps into his arms. He asks her to run away with him. “I love you,” he says. “Make me happy,” she says. They fall into each other’s eyes.
Back in the present David is still mocking her. “I love you, Anne.” He says, laughing. “Run away with me.” She throws her drink in his face and races out of the house. She gets back on her horse and rides off. At the top of a hill she sees her eighteen-year-old self, dressed in white, on a white horse. She calls her name and begins down the hill.
Rod Serling’s Closing Narration:
“This is the face of terror. Anne Marie Mitchell, forty-three years of age, her desolate existence once more afflicted by the hope of altering her past mistake - a hope which is unfortunately doomed to disappointment. For warnings from the future to the past must be taken in the past. Today may change tomorrow, but once today is gone, tomorrow can only look back in sorrow that the warning was ignored. Said warning as of now stamped 'Not Accepted' and stored away in the dead file, in the recording office... of the Twilight Zone.”
Commentary:
“Spur of the Moment” marks Richard Matheson’s final episode of The Twilight Zone. Matheson wrote fourteen episodes of the show, with Rod Serling adapting two of his previously published short stories during the show’s first season. This makes him the third most credited writer on the show, after Serling and Charles Beaumont. It came as an abrupt exit from the show for Matheson, who did not intend for this to be his final script for the program. Matheson had already sold a fifth teleplay to producer Bert Granet earlier in the season. But the production of that teleplay, “The Doll,” was subsequently cancelled by Granet’s mid-season replacement, producer William Froug, who attempted to take the struggling series in a different direction. Frustrated, Matheson stopped submitting scripts to the show. Years later, he would sell “The Doll” to Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories where it would win an Emmy Award for its star, John Lithgow, and would earn Matheson a Writers Guild of America Award nomination. Matheson would continue to be involved with the franchise for the rest of his life, writing the 1983 Twilight Zone movie, having several of his works adapted for reboots of the show, appearing at conventions, writing introductions, and giving numerous interviews. His tenure on the original series, however, was over. And although he would go on to become one of the most revered writers of speculative fiction ever, The Twilight Zone would remain one of his most notable achievements.
Matheson came to The Twilight Zone a successful novelist and short story writer, having already published his novels, I Am Legend (1954) and The Shrinking Man (1956), both landmark works in their respective genres. He had also already published many of the stories that would later be adapted for The Twilight Zone. While he had written a screenplay adaptation of The Shrinking Man, which won him a Hugo Award, and sold several teleplays to various series, Matheson was still relatively new to screenwriting. By the time the show ended in 1964, he was a seasoned screenwriter with numerous television and film credits, including scripting four films in Roger Corman’s highly successful run of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. He would go on to enjoy a long career in Hollywood while still maintaining a career as a successful novelist.
The cancellation of “The Doll” was not the first time that Matheson had had a negative experience with producer William Froug. In the early years of their television careers, Matheson and Charles Beaumont would often collaborate on scripts, with the logic being that since it was a new medium to both of them, and producers in the field may not have known who they were, their combined celebrity as successful prose writers might help them with pitching scripts. As it happened, they pitched several to the ABC series, Philip Marlowe, in which William Froug was a producer. While Beaumont received writing credit on a single episode (episode twelve, “The Hunger,” according to the Internet Movie Database, presumably an adaptation of his well-known short story), Matheson was unable to sell anything to the series.
The main thematic element found in “Spur of the moment” is one that is echoed in two of the other three of Matheson’s fifth season episodes, and one that is found throughout the Twilight Zone canon. Like Steel Kelly in “Steel” and Elva Keene in “Night Call,” Anne Henderson holds on to the fantasy that she can somehow change the past and that by doing so her present problems would simply disappear. She clearly has made the wrong decision in the person she chose to marry but that does not mean that marrying her first fiancé would have been the right choice either. A better choice maybe, but one that would have always felt like it was made for her. Her present day recollection of her father is, at best, a bitter one and it's presumable that she would have been resentful of him even if she had married Bob. Her tragedy is not in having made the wrong choice but in not having the option to choose her own life without having to project all of her hopes and dreams on David simply to defy her father's wishes.
The second act twist is brilliant and feels very much like a signature Matheson move. "Spur of the Moment" is a very talky script and Matheson's ability to hold the audience's attention with so much dialogue while successfully setting them up for a mid-episode reveal is an impressive balancing act. Placing the twist at such an unusual spot, instead of at the end of the episode, also gives it a shock value that it would not have had if the audience were expecting it.
The flashback scene at the engagement party where Anne makes the choice to run away with David does not appear in Matheson's script. He told editor Stanley Wiater that he did not remember if it was he who wrote it or not. The rest of the episode follows Matheson's script almost exactly so this scene was likely added to fill time. Regardless of who wrote it, likely Matheson, it ends up being a very beneficial scene as it highlights Anne detachment from herself facing a life that she does not want. It also paints Anne and David with a youthful glow making theme feel much more empathetic and making their fate all the more tragic.
This is the fourth and final episode directed by Elliot Silverstein. He previously directed “The Obsolete Man” during the show’s second season and “The Passersby” and “The Trade-Ins” during its third season, all brilliantly made episodes. Silverstein worked regularly in television during the 1950s through the mid-1960s and then turned his attention mostly to feature films. His most recognized film is almost certainly the 1965 Western comedy, Cat Ballou, which earned Lee Marvin an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role (two roles actually) along with another four nominations. His other films include A Man Called Horse (1970) and the 1977 vehicular possession movie, The Car. His television credits include episodes of Route 66, Naked City, Dr. Kildare, and Tales from the Crypt.
Aside from his directorial work, Silverstein is remembered today for pushing for more editorial control for directors and was the initial person to urge the Directors Guild of America to form the Creative Rights Committee, which he was later Chairman of for almost three decades. The Committee instituted a set of regulations which assured directors input in the final cut of their work. It also guaranteed them other necessities such as a private office on set. Many of these regulations became industry standards which are still in practice today. It was Silverstein who coined the phrase “director’s cut.” He was initially inspired to take the issue to the Directors Guild after his first episode of The Twilight Zone, “The Obsolete Man,” was edited in a way that he was unhappy with. The disagreement, Silverstein later insisted, was purely a professional one and was not anything personal, which is why he agreed to return to the show the following season.
All four of Silverstein’s episodes are highly atmospheric and showcase his fondness for German expressionism as well as Gothic imagery and minimalism. His episodes also have a whimsical, dreamlike quality that is immediately recognizable. This is evident from the very beginning of “Spur of the Moment” in which the young Anne Henderson sees the nightmarish image of a woman dressed in black emerge at the top of the ridge in broad daylight. The audience gets a closer look at the figure, however, via a rapid close in on the woman’s face. While Matheson liked this episode, he thought that the woman in black should be shot from far away to hide her face from the audience until it is revealed in the second act that it is, indeed, Anne. It would have been interesting to see how Silverstein would have shot this but his choice of showing a close up of younger Anne and then quickly zooming in on the woman in black, her face aged with makeup, and then immediately back to Anne is incredibly disorienting for the audience, especially so early in the episode. They register that the face is very similar but are not quite sure what they have seen or why.
Diana Hyland initially found success on the Broadway stage, appearing in several high-profile productions including the original cast of Tennessee William’s Sweet Bird of Youth, directed by Elia Kazan, in 1959. She went on to become a regular presence on American television for most of her career starting in the mid-1950s until her death at the of 41 in 1977. Today she is probably best remembered for her role in the series Peyton Place and her Emmy Award-winning role in the 1976 ABC made-for-television film The Boy in the Plastic Bubble with John Travolta.
Roger Davis has enjoyed a very long career as a screen actor. He is probably best remembered for his roles in the series Dark Shadows and Alias Smith and Jones. He also appeared in a segment of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery called “You Can Come Up Now, Mrs. Millikan” during the show’s third season. His performance here as Anne Henderson’s doomed true love, David Mitchell, is believable if a bit loud.
The supporting cast in this episode all give great performances. Marsha Hunt had been acting in Hollywood since the mid-1930s, mostly in supporting roles, despite her talent. She first made a name for herself as one of the Bennett sisters in the 1940 screen version of Pride and Prejudice. She also appeared in the Anthony Mann film noir, Raw Deal (1948). Other notable performances include roles in The Human Comedy (1943), The Valley of Decision (1945), and Johnny Got His Gun (1970). She was married to Robert Presnell, Jr., writer of the first season episode, “The Chaser.”
Phil Ober was also a Hollywood veteran by this point, appearing in supporting roles in a handful of A-list features including From Here to Eternity (1953), North by Northwest (1959), Elmer Gantry (1960), and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966).
Robert Hogan enjoyed a highly prolific career as a supporting player in television for over five decades. He appeared in a segment of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery called “Brenda” written by Twilight Zone director, Douglas Heyes, during the show’s second season.
Jack Raine had a very long career as an actor, mostly as a bit player, but he did occasionally enjoy larger roles in high profile films like Julius Caesar (1953) and Not as a Stranger (1955).
"Spur of the Moment" is an appropriately somber episode to mark Matheson's exit from the show. It is a highly atmospheric story, full of gorgeous imagery and mannerisms of the southern Gothic, and a heroine who is doomed to keep chasing her past presumably for the rest of her life. Multiple viewings are recommended for this one.
With a solid run of four quality episodes during The Twilight Zone's final season, Richard Matheson would leave the show on a high note. His contribution to the series is immeasurable, having giving it some of its most memorable episodes, one of which, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," went on to become one of the most well known moments of television history. Even with his numerous other achievements in film and literature, his work on The Twilight Zone would remain the project he was most known for, and would leave a lasting imprint on popular culture.
Grade:
B
Acknowledgements:
The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic by Martin Grams, Jr. (OTR, 2008)
The Twilight Zone Companion (3rd ed.) by Marc Scott Zicree (Silman-James Press, 2018)
Richard Matheson’s The Twilight Zone Scripts (Vol. 2) edited by Stanley Wiater (Gauntlet Press, 2002)
Richard Matheson on Screen: A History of the Filmed Works by Matthew R. Bradley (McFarland and Company, 2010)
“Meet the Man Who Created the Director’s Cut,” interview with Elliot Silverstein conducted by Charles Haine, March 07, 2018; nofilmschool.com
Internet Movie Database
Internet
Speculative Fiction Database
Notes:
__Jack
Raine also appeared in the season four episode “Passage on the Lady Anne.”
__Roger
Davis appeared in a segment of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, “You Can Come Up
Now, Mrs. Millikan,” during the show’s third season.
__Robert
Hogan appeared in a segment of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, “Brenda,” in the
show’s second season.
__Elliot
Silverstein also directed the season two episode, “The Obsolete Man,” and the
season three episodes, “The Passersby” and “The Trade-Ins.”
__This episode marks the last original score from Rene Garriguenc. He also composed scores for season one's "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street," season four's "Passage on the Lady Anne," and season five's "In Praise of Pip." All four of these scores were conducted by Lud Gluskin.
__Richard
Matheson is the third most credited writer on The Twilight Zone, after Rod
Serling and Charles Beaumont, receiving teleplay credit on a total of fourteen
episodes, and story credit on two more. He also wrote two segments for the
second season of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, “Big Surprise” and “The Funeral.”
He also wrote three of the four segments of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). He
wrote an adaptation of his short story, “Button, Button,” for the first season
of the 1985 revival series of The Twilight Zone but was displeased with the
segment and took his name off it, using his pseudonym, Logan Swanson, instead. In
1994, he adapted a story outline written by Serling called, “The Theatre,” for
the CBS television special, The Twilight Zone: Rod Serling’s Lost Classics.
__Matheson’s screen credits for
the original Twilight Zone series:
Season 1:
“Third from the Sun” (story credit)
“The Last Flight”
“A World of Difference”
“A World of His Own”
Season 2:
“The Invaders”
Season 3:
“Little Girl Lost”
“Young Man’s Fancy”
Season 4:
“Death Ship”
Season 5:
“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”
“Night Call”
“Spur of the Moment”
__Matheson's original title for this episode was "Pale Rider."
__This
episode was adapted into a Twilight Zone Radio Drama by Denis Etchison starring
Sarah Wayne Callies (Falcon Picture Group, 2007).
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| Richard Matheson (1926 - 2013) |
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