The Twilight Zone

[ShyViolet]

Interesting trivia on how Stand by Me (1986) was impacted by the Twilight Zone Movie tragedy (which occurred in 1982). I actually always wondered how they did the train scene.

https://screenrant.com/twilight-zone-mo ... -affected/

[Daniel]

Interesting. Such a sad tragedy.

[Daniel]

On the subject, Sean Clark did a video revisiting the films locations, including the helicopter crash site:



Some filler, but a fascinating vid!

[ShyViolet]

Thanks Dan!

[ShyViolet]

Great profile on Serling (interview with his daughter Anne)!

https://www.desertsun.com/story/life/en ... 899918001/

[Daniel]

There have been a number of reboots of the show over the years, the most recent in 2019 by Jordan Peele. Anne Serling said she "wasn't thrilled" with it, especially because ..

a CGI version of Rod Serling was used in an episode.

That was a pretty cool moment, though.

[Daniel]

The Airflite Cafe from "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" is still standing! That's so cool. One of my all time favorites. Solid acting from Cliff Robertson.

[Daniel]

Remembering Vic Morrow 40 years after the horrific tragedy. Still feels unreal. Random fact: Vic's line for the scene (that he never got to say) was "I'll keep you safe, kids. I promise. Nothing will hurt you, I swear to God."

[ShyViolet]

That was a supremely wonderful article, Dan! . Thank you so much for posting. .

As for Vic’s “last words” that he never got to say…I’ve often felt that even though the character of Bill never got to say them, VIC did, maybe not out loud, but in his efforts to shield and protect Renee and Myca right before all three were killed.

[EricJ]

Random fact: Vic's line for the scene (that he never got to say) was "I'll keep you safe, kids. I promise. Nothing will hurt you, I swear to God."

The story was supposed to end with Morrow saving two Vietnamese children from the helicopter, thus finally learning his human side and giving the story an actual TZ-esque point.
Before the scenes had to be scrambled into incoherence to edit around Morrow's death.

Robert Bloch, who was doing the paperback novelization, wrote from the original shooting script, but after the accident, was forced to re-edit it back to the scrambled final-cut version of the episode.

[Ben]

Really that whole sequence should have been scrapped and Landis told to make an alternative, cheaper opening, which could have been leaner and more economical with its storytelling.That’s what would happen now. At least it’s on the front of the film so that we can move on as quickly as possible.

[EricJ]

Except that, even in its scrambled state, Landis & Morrow manage to capture the tense, speechy, moralistic Rod Serling vibe of the original show more than the other self-indulgent director freeform-jazz we get in the rest of the movie.

If Spielberg, Dante and Miller were as fans enough of the show as they claim (instead of geeking over iconic plots and twist endings, as most of us did in the early days of the 80s Rerun Renaissance) and did the same job of capturing the series' tone, we'd have one of the good TV-adaptation movies.
As it is, it's like the movie version of Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks trying to remember old pop-culture rerun themes.

[Ben]

True. The other directors went for the whimsical and fantastical, respectively, over Landis' "basic" take on the fantastic. At least we got Amazing Stories out of it, which had a good handful or two of truly great episodes in its short two season run (and, by extension, the Zemeckis-and-others' Tales From The Crypt).

[ShyViolet]

Really that whole sequence should have been scrapped and Landis told to make an alternative, cheaper opening, which could have been leaner and more economical with its storytelling.That’s what would happen now. At least it’s on the front of the film so that we can move on as quickly as possible.

From what I understand, the main reason Warners kept Segment One in the film was because almost all of it had already been shot. But it was still a pretty sick/tacky decision.

True. The other directors went for the whimsical and fantastical, respectively, over Landis' "basic" take on the fantastic. At least we got Amazing Stories out of it, which had a good handful or two of truly great episodes in its short two season run (and, by extension, the Zemeckis-and-others' Tales From The Crypt).

Amazing Stories was great! Mostly know the movie, but I did see a bunch of eps randomly as a kid which I really enjoyed.

The opening theme was awesome too…was the music by John Williams or Alan Silvestri?

https://youtu.be/VpeBGQ1S5t8

[Randall]

The opening theme was awesome too…was the music by John Williams or Alan Silvestri?
https://youtu.be/VpeBGQ1S5t8

Surprised you have to ask!

That's 100% Johnny, baby!