Nervous Airline Passengers & Crew Abound In 2 TZ Favorites!

These two "aircraft"-related episodes of "The Twilight Zone" are two of my favorites from the Rod Serling-created TV series.

These black-and-white shows look quite good on this VHS videotape. Hi-Fi Mono audio is provided. At the beginning of the tape, there's a "CBS / FOX Collector's Preview", which consists of trailer ads for the first four VHS "Zone" volumes. Short clips from the eight episodes on those four tapes are included. This volume (#3) is one of those shown in the "Preview".

The first TZ program offered up here is a Season-Five episode -- "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet". It stars William Shatner as a very (very) nervous airline passenger aboard a commercial propliner. Bill thinks he sees a gremlin on the wing of his airplane while in flight! Is Bill plain nuts? He's had a mental breakdown aboard a plane in the past. Is it happening to him again? Or is there really a furry-looking beast fiddling around with one of the engines on the aircraft's portside wing?

Nobody can see the creature except Bill (who portrays "Bob Wilson" here). The beast jumps away each time a stewardess or anyone else looks out the window to catch a glimpse. This has gotta be slightly annoying for Bob/Bill. Kind of like seeing a UFO and having nobody believe you!

But, thankfully, for Bob Wilson that is, Rod Serling's final remarks are uttered at the end of this program, letting us know that ..... "Tangible manifestation is very often left as evidence of trespass -- even from so intangible a quarter as ... The Twilight Zone". The camera then pans across the wing of the airplane, revealing the damage caused by Bob's wing-walking creature.

"Nightmare" was first seen on CBS-TV on October 11, 1963. It was episode number 123 of "Zone", and the third program shown during the series' fifth year on the air.

Main "Nightmare" guest star Bill Shatner appeared in multiple TZ episodes, and also made guest appearances on dozens of other television programs throughout the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. He has made nearly 200 guest shots in TV shows since 1956; plus a roster of movie appearances that number more than 100 (beginning in 1951, when he was 20). These TV and movie appearances, of course, are in addition to Bill's career-defining role as "Captain James T. Kirk" on "Star Trek".

"Nightmare" Trivia ....... The fur-covered "gremlin" was played by Nick Cravat, who was Burt Lancaster's acrobatic circus partner. Cravat made just 19 films in his career, nine of those co-starring with Lancaster. Nick's TV appearances were even a rarer event -- just 5 total, including his silent role as the hairy airplane-smashing gnome/alien on "Zone".

In this tape's second episode, "The Odyssey Of Flight 33", a Boeing 707 commercial jetliner is heading straight into the "Zone", at record speeds. The jetliner hits "one lulu of a jetstream" (or so the flight crew thinks) when their 707 begins to pick up speed for no discernible reason. But the plane has actually gone back in time -- millions of years! It's a great premise for a TZ episode, and a very good script, which was written solely by Rod Serling. The scene where the bewildered flight crew looks out the window and gazes upon the rather unexpected sight of .... of all things .... a dinosaur! .... is a very memorable moment in Mr. Serling's tension-filled manuscript. The reptile we see is just a tiny toy (moved via stop-motion photography), and can hardly rival the reptiles of "Jurassic Park" on the realism scale -- but Mr. Serling's toy beast still conveyed its message well enough.

One thing that strikes me as rather humorous in this "Odyssey" episode is the large number of flight-crew members that are working in the aircraft's cockpit. There are five men on the flight deck on this Boeing 707 flight from London to New York. However, Mr. Serling evidently does have his facts straight in this regard -- because I believe that a cockpit crew on a long-haul overseas flight back then (1961) did consist of five people.

But looking at that episode today, it does appear strange to see that many people needed to fly one aircraft. Today's modern jetliners, with the "fly-by-wire" technology and "glass cockpits" (e.g.: the Boeing 747-400, Boeing 777, Airbus A330, and Airbus A340, among others), only require a mere two-man team of pilots to operate them. (Although on super-long flights of more than 10 hours or so, a back-up set of pilots is always on board to relieve the first team part of the way through the flight.)

The "Odyssey" episode contains an underlying quality of restless uneasiness, that is only accentuated by the effective use of the background music. In fact, both of the TZ eps. on this VHS tape sport good musical scores, which complement the material on screen nicely.

"Odyssey" is a show from TZ season #2 (the eighteenth installment from that season). It aired on February 24, 1961 on CBS. It's the 54th overall episode in the series, and stars John Anderson as the Captain of the airliner. Other guests: Harp McGuire, Paul Comi, and Sandy Kenyon.

Kenyon was a highly-visible character actor during the 1950s and 1960s (and even into the '70s and '80s as well), popping up on numerous TV shows, including three guest shots on "The Twilight Zone". Sandy's career roster of TV roles is a lengthy one indeed, with more than 100 total appearances, beginning in the very early days of television with a role in a "Hallmark Hall-Of-Fame" program in February of 1952.

Interestingly (and coincidentally), John Anderson -- Kenyon's co-star in this "Odyssey" TZ ep. -- also made his first TV appearance on the "Hallmark Hall-Of-Fame" series. The very same year as Kenyon's debut, in fact (1952). And Anderson, like Kenyon, also was cast several times as a guest on "The Twilight Zone".

Anderson, prior to his death at age 69 in August 1992, logged 198 TV guest appearances, plus roles in more than 80 movies. Whenever I see Mr. Anderson in something, I'm always reminded of the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock film "Psycho", in which Anderson appears as a used car salesman (he sold the fleeing Janet Leigh a car near the beginning of the picture). Oddly, however, several Internet sources that list movie casts claim that Anderson played a "hardware clerk" in "Psycho", which is inaccurate.

Anderson is given some compelling dialogue by Mr. Serling in "The Odyssey Of Flight 33". I like his succinct and to-the-point declaration to the rest of the flight crew when it is discovered that his airplane is a tad ... shall we say ... off course --- "The real estate is there ... it's just that the city and 8 million people are missing".

Anderson also issues a couple of announcements to the passengers of "Flight 33", one of which includes a comment about the aircraft experiencing some "atmospheric phenomena" -- how would you like to hear those words coming from your airline Captain?! I think I'd be a bit worried if I heard that. I'd probably start frantically searching out the windows for flying saucers, or possibly even large-sized furry beasts that might be taking up residence out on the wings. :-)


Additional thoughts / notes / trivia / goofs regarding "The Odyssey Of Flight 33" ............

>> In the final act of the episode, the airline Captain makes a statement to the passengers over the intercom, in order to (as he said) "let them in on it". But that seems a bit odd to me -- because didn't the Captain think the passengers might have been even the slightest bit concerned or alarmed when they, too, saw the dinosaur(s) below them? Surely the huge reptilian beasts weren't visible to JUST the flight crew. The time for the Captain to have made his cabin announcement to "let them in on it", in my opinion, would have been right after the dinosaur incident -- don't ya think?? Rather than only after the aircraft has "returned" part of the way back to their current time of 1961 (they go through the "time barrier" a second time and find themselves in the year 1939).

I'll tell ya one thing though -- I'd sure as heck rather land in New York, circa 1939, than take my chances co-mingling with pre-historic dinosaurs from millions of years ago. For, somehow, via that latter option, I don't think the humans are going to win that one-sided struggle. (LOL.)

>> Rod Serling's brother, Robert J. Serling, who was an "aviation writer" for UPI, helped write the pilot's technical dialogue, which was integrated into the "Odyssey" script.

>> The dinosaur scene was the most expensive single scene ever filmed for a "Twilight Zone" episode. The dinosaur shots cost $2,500 to film.

>> The toy dinosaur used in this TZ episode is one of the same miniature brontosaurus models that can be seen in the 1960 movie "Dinosaurus".

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In-a-nutshell Summary ..........

This third VHS volume of "The Twilight Zone" won't disappoint fans of the series at all. On tap are two outstanding "themed" episodes that contain all of the elements that made Mr. Serling's fantasy anthology series so captivating -- The Unknown, Suspense, Preying on man's fears, and a Creature or two thrown in for good measure (pre-historic and otherwise).

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