The Twilight Zone: Original Series (Season One)
What:
The Twilight Zone: Original Series (Season One)
Where:
From Shock DVD
When:
Now available at most DVD retailers
Watch the opening ten minutes of the episode The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street: here
Before The X-Files made conspiracy nerds into countercultural heroes in the 90s, you would whistle the doo-DOO-doo-DOO of The Twilight Zone theme for easy cultural shorthand that something was eerie, uncanny, or just too damn coincidental. From 1959 through to 1964 - before the show had even adopted that familiar theme - the so-called "fifth dimension" of The Twilight Zone was the best thing on TV.
The first season has finally been remastered and released on DVD, and while decades of pop-culture parody mean the twist endings no longer hold much surprise, it barely matters. The Twilight Zone was obsessed with men and women, spiralling through strange morality fables of McCarthy-era paranoia, suddenly aware of how fragile the bonds of reality might be.
(Unexpectedly being told that you'll be replaced in your own life story if you keep getting your lines wrong, for example, will do that to you.)
Writer/Creator Rod Serling's theatrical narration; the experimental and often expressionistic touches; the soft, black and white cinematography - it all gives these 36 episodes the air of long-lost artefacts uncovered in a derelict bomb shelter, maybe, or in a green-glowing meteor cracked open on impact.
Format: DVD
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