The Twilight Zone is the anthology sci-fi horror series to which all other similar shows owe their existence. Without The Twilight Zone, there would be no Tales from the Crypt, The Outer Limits, Goosebumps, or Black Mirror. While the series had the horror and fantasy of later series, The Twilight Zone was mostly concerned with sci-fi stories that doubled as morality tales. These stories put people into horrific and terrifying situations, and their decisions play into whether they are saved or ruined in the end. When it comes to bad karma and traumatizing endings, nothing hit harder than The Twilight Zone.
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Based on the anthology series’ original run (1959-1964), here are the 10 Twilight Zone episodes that still stand up as well today as they did when they first came out.
10) “Living Doll”
The 12th episode from the fifth season, “Living Doll,” took something that terrifies many people, and that is little old dolls with big eyes. The plot follows a mother who buys her daughter a wind-up doll called “Talky Tina,” who says “My name is Talky Tina, and I love you very much” when it is wound up. However, when the girl’s abusing step father winds the doll up, it says, “I don’t like you.” The episode has a recognizable star, with Telly Savalas playing the stepfather. The lesson that child abusers will get what is coming to them remains strong to this day.
9) “Mirror Image”
“Mirror Image” is the 21st episode of The Twilight Zone, Season 1. This episode was a little more twisted than others and used more visual cues than straight-up horrific moments. Millicent is at a bus stop waiting for a bus to look for a new job. She soon realizes that the bus is late. Strange things happen around her, where the bus attendant says she has been there before, and the bathroom cleaning lady also backs this up. This is a doppelgänger story, and one of the better “monster” stories in The Twilight Zone’s first season. It is also one of the best Twilight Zone episodes that not enough people talk about.
8) “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?”
“Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” is a second-season episode of The Twilight Zone, and one that plays strongly into the idea of the Red Scare of that era. Much like horror films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, this is a story about not trusting other people. This is a theme that remains strong to this day, and even with the idea that one of these men is a Martian on Earth prepping for an invasion, it is still mainly a tale of distrust and paranoia.
7) “The Invaders”
Another second-season episode, “The Invaders,” is a twisted tale that has an ending that changes everything a viewer thinks they know about the story. The episode begins with an older woman in a remote cabin who hears something above her, and she soon finds what appears to be two beings in pressurized suits who arrived in a flying saucer. The woman then defends her home against these invaders. This, in itself, is a straightforward sci-fi tale, but the twist at the end shows the woman is a giant and the “invaders” are U.S. Air Force astronauts sent to deal with these monsters. This twist was one of the most inventive in the entire anthology series.
6) “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”
“The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” was another first-season Twilight Zone episode that was yet another paranoia-focused story. This plays into the same Cold War paranoia of “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?”, but transfers it into small-town America. The main characters were the residents on Maple Street, presented as a perfect small-town neighborhood where everyone watched out for each other. However, this all changes when strange occurrences make the neighbors believe one of them is an alien, and by the end, they are destroying their entire neighborhood in an all-out war. The twist ending here that reveals the truth is funny and shows that paranoia can lead any society to collapse.
5) “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”
“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” is a fifth-season episode that might be the most famous in The Twilight Zone’s history, if for no other reason than that it stars William Shatner years before he starred as Captain Kirk in Star Trek. Shatner plays Robert Wuilson, a man who was just released from a sanitarium after a mental breakdown. This makes his accusations that he sees a gremlin on his plane’s wing seem suspicious at best. Directed by Richard Donner (Superman) and written by Richard Matheson (I Am Legend), this stands as the most remembered Twilight Zone episode ever.
4) “Eye of the Beholder”
“Eye of the Beholder” is a sly Season 2 Twilight Zone episode that plays with viewers’ expectations before pulling back the curtain at the end and throwing the entire story into turmoil. Through most of the episode, the story looks like the tale of a young woman who wants to perfect her appearance and has just had her 11th treatment to fix her face, which is the most the state allows. Her face remains bandaged up, and everyone is talking about how this seems like it could be a failure again. The biggest clue is that no one sees the doctors until the end, when they take off the bandages, and she looks fine, only to reveal that the doctors have pig snouts and sunken lips, and they consider her the “ugly” one. It is a brilliant spin on the term that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
3) “To Serve Man”
The best part of “To Serve Man” is the wordplay in the episode. In this Season 3 episode, an alien arrives on Earth from a race known as the Kanamits. He is a 9-foot-tall alien, and goes to meet the assembled delegates at the United Nations, and he addresses the Earth. He explains that his race can share advanced technologies that can solve all Earth’s problems, but when he leaves behind a book, humans try to decipher it. The book is called “To Serve Man,” and this helps comfort all humanity. That is the best part, as this episode lives and dies by the pun. This is a cookbook for his race, with the key ingredient being “man.” It is easily the funniest Twilight Zone episode, thanks to this brilliant joke.
2) “It’s a Good Life”
“It’s a Good Life” is a third-season Twilight Zone episode that is one of the show’s most terrifying. In this episode, an entire town lives in fear and knows there is no way out and no way to escape. That is because a six-year-old boy in the town named Anthony, who has incredible psychic powers, and no one in the town can go against him, or he punishes them, often in horrific ways. The episode even shows someone trying to end his reign of terror, only to end up turned into a jack-in-the-box. The ending shows how this child will end up eventually killing everyone because this much power in a child this young is never a good thing. The idea of the all-powerful child became a horror trope over the years, and this remains one of the best stories to use that theme.
1) “Time Enough at Last”
The best Twilight Zone episode of all time is also one of the darkest, as the person who ends up ruined here never deserved his fate. The first season episode, “Time Enough at Last,” was the first genuine masterpiece for the anthology television series. Burgess Meredith is a man who lives in a small town and just wants to read books, although his fellow townspeople often prevent him from achieving this love. However, when an H-bomb gets dropped in his town, it kills almost everyone and destroys almost everything. However, this one man lived, and when he found the library intact, he realized he could finally achieve his sole dream in life. What happens next is tragic, and this downer ending cements this as the best Twilight Zone ever, holding up perfectly 67 years later.
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images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
