Best Twilight Zone episodes ever (?!?)

[ChadtheH]

Hey gang. After catching an episode or two of the classic 1959-64 series Twilight Zone on Sci-Fi late at night, and with the recent release of one of the last seasons on DVD, I got to wondering...which episodes were the best? Most were at least fair entertainment, but a few left a lasting impression on science fiction and televion, in my opinion. So name your all-time favorite(s) here! Let's see if we all agree or disagree:

I nominate...

1. "Wiloughby." Man imagines his commuter train to work is stopping in a time and place of innocence and ease.

2. "Talking Tina" Creepy talking doll menaces moody stepfather Telly Savalas.

3. "The Monsters are out on Maple Street" Fear and possible aliens come to the suburbs.


Your turn..!

[the_big_billbowski]

Sorry I dont know the names of each episode I nominate but i'll just give a brief synopsis. Be warned, I"m going to spoil some episodes.

I like the one were some little old lady is alone in a house and she is being tormented by tiny space creatures. finally at the end you see the space creatures take off in thier UFO and you see that it says US Airforce. It wasnt tiny aliens landing on earth, it was humans landing on a alien planet of giants.

Probably my all time favorite is the one with Burgess Merideth where he is the book keeper and the only survivor of nuclear armagedon. He finally has all the time in the world to read the books of a library and he breaks his glasses. Unable to see.

[david r]

@Big Billbowski,

You're favorite episodes are called:

1) The Invaders

2) Time Enough at Last

[the_big_billbowski]

@Big Billbowski,

You're favorite episodes are called:

1) The Invaders

2) Time Enough at Last


Thanks David R

[david r]

My personal favorites:

Eye of the Beholder: A bandaged woman in a hospital, whose face is horribly deformed. The doctors and nurses who have done surgery to make her "normal" are mysteriously hidden in shadow. A truly innovative episode.

Night Calls: An elderly woman keeps getting spooky telephone calls in the night, with some man's voice slowly saying her name. This episode is truly frightening. Especially the "twist".

Walking Distance: Burned out businessman returns to his hometown, and discovers it is EXACTLY as it was when he was a small boy. This one makes me cry.

Little Girl Lost: A young girl disappears into her wall, and her parents discover she's entered some other dimension. How to rescue her?? Wild and weird this one!!

I'd say Twilight Zone is my favorite TV series of all time.

[Gargus]

I liked the one alot where an old man is dying and has his family come to his house and they are all leeches that just want him to die for his money and he has them all wear masks as part of a game until midnight.

I remember another but I cant recall what happened in it but I know I liked it. Something like this guy has the devil trapped in his basement and has the door sealed with something that looked like a small tree branch. Hell that might have been a night gallery episode though.

[Rob Imes]

"Walking Distance" is my all-time favorite.

An underrated one is "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" about a future society where people are pressured to conform in their looks to resemble pre-conceived notions of beauty. (Hmmm, maybe that wasn't the "future" after all!)

[ChadtheH]

Oh, yeah..."Time enough at last." Dat's a good one.

Refresh my memory, though... "Walking Distance," with the man who finds his boyhood home unchanged. Wasn't there one like that called the "World of Horace Ford?" In that one, every time the man walked down a certain street he'd find everything stuck in the time of his boyhood--even the kids he used to hang with were there and had never grown up. I remember it starred Pat Hingle, who later became Commissioner Gordon in the Batman movies. Are we talking about the same episode?

[Sean Walsh]

THE OBSOLETE MAN will probably always be my favorite.

[Gezora]

"The Hunt"

It wouldn't be Heaven without the dog....

[davids]

We discover how time really passes and you can offer to sell your soul to the devil and not even know it! [So that is what the devil does with all those souls!]

[Haunt]

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up
Jess-Belle
Caesar and Me
The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
The Howling Man
Living Doll
He's Alive
It's a Good Life
Nothing in the Dark
The Hunt
The Jeopardy Room
The Silence

[Ravenheart]

Some of my favorites are Eye of the Beholder,Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,
Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up and To Serve Man.

[ChadtheH]

Nightmare at 20,000 feet...that's the one with Shatner and the thing on the plane wing, right?

[Phrozen]

I liked the one where the salesperson had to make his best pitch to Death to save a young girls life.

[Ravenheart]

There's another one I like but I can't remember what its called.Its the one with the manequins at the department store.

[Haunt]

There's another one I like but I can't remember what its called.Its the one with the manequins at the department store.

i think it's called After Hours.

Nightmare at 20,000 feet...that's the one with Shatner and the thing on the plane wing, right?


yessir. i reflexively check for gremlins; whenever i fly.

[david r]

I liked the one where the salesperson had to make his best pitch to Death to save a young girls life.

That one is called One for the Angels.

I also love the episode titled The Hitch-Hiker, where a young woman survives a blow-out on a long car drive. Following the car accident, she starts seeing a mysterious hitch-hiker who always seems to be up ahead of her. Great ending.

[Haunt]

That one is called One for the Angels.

I also love the episode titled The Hitch-Hiker, where a young woman survives a blow-out on a long car drive. Following the car accident, she starts seeing a mysterious hitch-hiker who always seems to be up ahead of her. Great ending.


i think the latter was more entertaining when it appeared in the movie Creepshow 2, personally. "thanks for the ride lady."

[tonearcher]

My favorite is Mirror Image where a woman is in a bus station, and the people there say she keeps repeating the same actions over and over but she insists its her first time doing them. She then comes to the conclusion that we each have a counterpart from another dimension that will take our lives over.

[Albert]

Its hard to whittle it down to m favorites, but two come to mind:


To Serve Man This one is so well-known and has been parodied on the Simpsons, so I hardly think it needs elaboration.

and

Printer's Devil with Burgess Meredith, where Lucifer takes a job at a small town neswpaper. Great characterization by Meredith, down to the crooked cigars he smoked. I believe that it was Charles Beaumont who penned that episode.

[Kirayoshi]

THE OBSOLETE MAN will probably always be my favorite.Seconded! Best punchline in Twilight Zone history(spoilers for the uninitiated):
"In God's name, man, let me out!"

"Yes. In God's name I will let you out."

Also, "A Passage for Trumpet", with Jack Klugman as a down-and-out trumpet player who finds himself in a Limbo state after throwing himself in front of a truck.

"Night of the Meek". Art Carney as a drunk department store Santa who discovers a bag that contains a never-ending supply of gifts which he distributes freely.

"Once Upon a Time" A sentimental favorite and not one of the better-known episodes, but still worth checking out. Buster Keaton(the opening and closing scenes are done like a silent movie) as a disgruntled man fed up with how much things cost in his time, who finds himself accidently sent into the future, where he learns to appreciate his own time.

"The Big Tall Wish" A kid's wish affects the outcome of a boxing match. A powerful piece.

"The Jeopardy Room" A creative KGB assassin targets a defector(Martin Landau). Not really SF but a good suspence piece.

"A Game of Pool" A pool-hustler gets the chance to challenge a long-dead legend(Jonathan Winters) in a round of pool, with his soul as the stakes. Who would have thought Winters could pull off a purely dramatic role?

Edit: One more I remembered from checking imdb.com; "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". I think this one was actually a short film that wasn't made exclusively as a TW ep, but Rod liked it so much that he bought the rights to show it on the series. Based on a story by Civil War-era writer Ambrose Bierce, involving a Confederate soldier about to be hung off a bridge, but miraculously escapes--or does he? No dialogue, nor was it needed.

[theflyingfrogunderdog]

My favorite is the space eposide with Jack Klugman. He and two other astronauts are aboard a spaceship that lands on a planet only to find a duplicate of their own spaceship that has already crashed on the planet. Eventually, they realize that they already crashed and they're now ghosts orbiting the planet and repeating the same experience forever.

[david r]

That one is called Death Ship.

I also liked The Thirty-Fathom Grave, where a U.S. Navy ship discovers the sunken remains of a WWII vessel. The men hear some tapping coming from the sunken ship, and then weird things start to happen. This was a great hour episode.

[DWEarhart]

Out of bias, one of mine is A Game of Pool. A lonely pool shark, Jesse (Jack Klugman) offers anything to play a game against the best pool player he's ever known, James "Fats" Brown (Johnathan Winters). Unfortunately, Fats is dead, but Jesse is given his chance.

Jesse beats Fats, but learns the lesson, that in order to continue being the best, one must prove it time and time again, even beyond your dying days.

After Rod Serling's intro, it's only these two guys throughout the whole episode. Two good actors carrying a single episode, and, the reason I'm bias, they're playing pool (I love the game).

[marshal99]

Can't say i remember Twilight zone episodes that much but i do remember 3 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock presents that is shown together as it was so totally unlike the series at all as it has a james bond story , a sherlock holmes story and a vampire story. :D

[DWEarhart]

Can't say i remember Twilight zone episodes that much but i do remember 3 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock presents that is shown together as it was so totally unlike the series at all as it has a james bond story , a sherlock holmes story and a vampire story. :D

I loved watching Alfred Hitchcock presents when it was on Nick at Nite. I love watching them on any channel, but Nick at Nite was where I saw them most.

[Space Poo]

There's another one I like but I can't remember what its called.Its the one with the manequins at the department store.

That's my favorite. After Hours. It scared me as a child.

My other fav is The Hitch-hiker. Where a woman keeps seeing the same hitch-hiker at different points along her roadtrip. Ugh, creepy!