Of course, the titular Invaders aren't aliens at all, but (spoiler) human beings, crashed on a planet where everything looks vaguely like Earth, but the residents (and their accompanying possessions) are about 100 times as big. Besides Serling's usual monologues, the only dialogue isn't even spoken by our main character (Agnes Moorhead), but over a radio from the "alien" ship. With a movie it can be almost a selling point of sorts - "Hey, there's a movie out with almost no dialogue, check it out." but an episode of TV, on an anthology show where it's easy for someone to shrug it off for a week knowing there's no overall story to keep up with, it's damned ballsy. I recently saw All Is Lost, in which there are only about three lines of dialogue in the entire film (one of which is just a long, "FUUUUUUCK!"), so with it fresh in my mind I was impressed to see something similar done on an episode of television. So even if these aren't all the best episodes of all time (though none are stinkers), it's a great disc to look at if you need convincing as to how influential the show was. And "Flight 33" might have had some influence on Lost, with its story of a plane going through some freaky stuff mid-flight and going back in time. "Twenty Two" is an episodic (and ugly, since it was one of the video episodes) version of Final Destination's opening sequence. "Penny" is basically What Women Want but with both sexes. "The Whole Truth" was recycled for Liar, Liar. "Back There" is one of the first filmed versions of a "What if I went back in time to save the President?" scenario. Join me, won't you?Īn interesting thing about this disc is how many episodes inspired other movies or shows. This post is part of a new limited series column, where I will go through a disc at a time and offer some highlights on each as I make my way down the path of being a much more educated genre fan (not to mention someone who will understand 7-8% more "Treehouse of Horror" gags). It's depressing, really.īut a recent acquisition of the series boxed set (a newly packaged version from RLJ that is now in stores) has given me the opportunity to fix that. Over the years I've seen a few on late night TV, and usually not paying much attention to boot - I've probably "seen" more episodes via Simpsons parodies (or 1983 feature film remakes) than the right way. I have a confession to make one that will surprise and possibly upset you: as of November 1st, 2013, I had seen more episodes of 2002's Twilight Zone revival starring Forest Whitaker than I had the original series that ran from 1959 to 1964.
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