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Twilight Zone: The Movie is a 1983 film produced by Steven Spielberg as a theatrical version of The Twilight Zone, a 1950s and 60s TV series created by Rod Serling. It starred Dan Aykroyd, Albert Brooks, Vic Morrow and John Lithgow. The film remade three classic episodes of the original series and included one original story. John Landis directed the prologue and the first segment, Spielberg directed the second, Joe Dante the third, and George Miller directed the final segment.
TaglineYou're traveling through another dimension. A dimension, not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Zone! PlotSpoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
PrologueThe film starts with a driver (Albert Brooks) and his passenger (Dan Aykroyd) driving through the mountains very late at night, singing along to Creedence Clearwater Revival's cover of Midnight Special on a cassette, which then breaks. Then the conversation turns to what scares them. The driver turns off the headlights and continues to drive. The passenger becomes nervous and demands he turn them back on. They play a game where they challenge each other to name TV theme songs. After several theme songs are mentioned, they begin to talk about their favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone. The passenger then asks the driver, "Do you want to see something really scary?" The driver says yes. "Pull over," says the passenger. "Pull over?" the driver asks. The driver pulls over. The passenger asks him again, "You sure you really want to see something scary?" The driver, exasperated, says yes. The passenger says "ok," and turns away from the driver. "What are you doing?" the driver asks. The passenger turns back around, and he has become a demon. The demon attacks the driver, and as we hear a very audible "SNAP!" followed by silence, the familiar Twilight Zone theme music begins, as do the opening credits. First SegmentThe only original segment was the first, directed by Landis. It is loosely based on the original Twilight Zone episode "A Quality of Mercy" and slightly "Deaths-Head Revisited." An outspoken bigot finds himself traveling through time, occupying the bodies of victims of injustice: a Jewish victim of the Holocaust, a black man about to be lynched by the Ku Klux Klan, and a Vietnamese man about to be killed by U.S. soldiers. As a result of the fatal accident that occurred during its filming (see below), this segment ends quite differently than originally scripted. Originally, Morrow's character was to learn a major lesson in compassion when, during the Vietnam scenes, he rescues two children who are innocently caught in a firefight between Viet Cong and US troops. However, the segment ends with Morrow's character being sent off to a Nazi concentration camp, with no redemption possible. This explains why the segment seems truncated to most viewers. Second Segment
Third SegmentThe third segment is a remake of the episode "It's a Good Life", directed by Dante. A woman (Kathleen Quinlan) gives a boy (Jeremy Licht) a ride home. When she is invited in for dinner, she finds herself the newest member of his "family" consisting of Kevin McCarthy, Patricia Barry, William Schallert and Nancy Cartwright. The family members are actually strangers who were lured to the house in the same way the woman was. They are all imprisoned by the boy's ability to turn his imagination into reality and cannot leave the house. The ending of this version is happier than that of the TV episode. Here, the boy is convinced to end his cruelty and to develop his power for a greater good, while in the show he continues to be bad and kills the person who rises up against him. Fourth SegmentRemake of the "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" episode, directed by Miller. An already fearful airline passenger (John Lithgow) starts seeing a gremlin on the plane's wing, tearing apart the engine. Panicked, no one believes him. He breaks a window and grabs an officer's gun, trying to shoot the gremlin. The gremlin gets away, and the plane is forced to make an emergency landing. It is only as the man is being taken away that the plane's crew discovers unexplained damage to the engine. EpilogueThe end of the fourth segment connects with the character from the prologue. John Lithgow's character is in an ambulance on his way to an asylum when the ambulance driver turns around to reveal himself as Dan Aykroyd's character from the opening. The driver says, "Had a bit of a scare up there, huh? Well, wanna see something really scary?..." at which point the movie ends. Helicopter AccidentThe making of the movie had consequences that overshadowed the film itself. During the filming of a segment directed by John Landis on July 23, 1982, actor Vic Morrow and child actors Myca Dinh Le (age 7) and Renee Shin-Yi Chen (age 6) died in an accident involving a helicopter being used on the set. The helicopter was flying at an altitude of only 25 feet, too low to avoid the explosions of the pyrotechnics used on set. When the blasts severed the tail rotor, it spun out of control and crashed, decapitating Morrow and one of the children with its blades. The other child was crushed to death as the helicopter crashed. Everyone inside the helicopter was unharmed. The accident led to legal action against the filmmakers that lasted nearly a decade, and changed the regulations involving children working on movie sets at night and during special effects-heavy scenes. Hollywood also avoided helicopter-related stunts for many years, until the CGI revolution of the 90s made it possible to use digital versions. As a result of the accident, one second assistant director had his name removed from the credits and replaced with the pseudonymous Alan Smithee. The incident also ended the friendship between director Landis and producer Spielberg, who was already angered before the accident that Landis violated so many codes, including using live ammunition on the set.[citation needed] Release and ReactionTwilight Zone: The Movie opened on June 24, 1983 to mixed reviews. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times rated each segment individually, awarding them on a scale of four stars: two for the prologue and first segment, one-and-a-half for the second, three-and-a-half stars for the third, and three-and-a-half for the final. The Nightmare segment was widely praised, with John Lithgow's performance often singled out, but the other segments were less popular. Many critics accused Spielberg's Kick the Can of excessive sentimentality. The film was very much hurt by the controversy of the infamous helicopter accident, and the box office results showed lukewarm public interest. According to boxofficemojo.com, it grossed $6,614,366 - not what executives were looking for, but it remains the number one grossing anthology film in cinema history and helped stir enough interest for CBS to give the go-ahead to the 1980s TV version of The Twilight Zone. It has been released to VHS several times, most recently as part of WB's "Hits" line, but never to DVD. However, in a recent chat with the Home Theater Forum, a WB Home Video representative said that they recognized the great demand for a DVD release of the film and that it was under "heavy consideration." A more recent WB chat with the HTF on Feb. 27th, 2007 revealed WB's intent to release the DVD by Halloween 2007. References in TV and filmIn the comedy series 3rd Rock from the Sun, starring John Lithgow, events in the fourth segment are mentioned twice: In episode 12 of the first season, Dick (Lithgow) and Mary (Jane Curtin) are seated in a plane which is about to take-off for Chicago. Suddenly, Dick goes berserk, looks out the window and shouts "Oh my God! Out there! There's something on the wing!". Mary's assurance that "it's an engine" doesn't seem to calm him down. They end up driving. In episode 23 of the fourth season, "Dick's Big Giant Headache, Part I"; the Big Giant Head (played by William Shatner who portrayed the main character from the original televised episode) tells Dick of a bad experience he once had on an airplane, and Dick exclaims that the same thing happened to him some time earlier. The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror II" spoofs It's A Good Life with Bart (voiced by actress Nancy Cartwright, who appeared in that segment of the film) taking the role of Anthony. In an episode of Pani Poni Dash!, in her dream, Becky is talking to 2 kids, one of them saying "Yeah. Did we mention we're the 2 kids who died when we were making the Twilight Zone movie.", to which Becky responds "No fucking way! Uh...but where's the man?", and one of them responds "In Hell, because God always puts kids to Heaven, cause they're sweet, and nice."
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