The Twilight Zone: Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room

John "Jackie" Rhoades is a small time crook, doing odd jobs for the slick George. Here he paces a small room, biting his nail, waiting for George to call about the next assignment. When George does call and Jackie cannot get any details out of him over the phone, it only makes him more nervous.

Eventually, George drops by and tells Jackie that he has to man up and kill a man, something Jackie has never done before and obviously does not have the guts to do. He describes himself as "nickels and dimes". But he is left with the choice to kill or be killed. They set to meet again in the room at 2.30 a.m., at which time the hit should have been done.

When he is alone again, Jackie tries to get his courage up by talking himself up in the mirror. But then his mirror image starts talking back. The two Jackies start fighting over their life of petty crime and occasional stints in prison. This other half of him wants Jackie to get his life on track.

George calls again to check on whether or not Jackie is actually going to do as he is told. When he comes at the agreed time, however, Jackie has not even left the room and the target is alive and well. What George didn't see coming is that this "nickels and dimes" guy is not going to take any shit anymore and knocks George down before chasing him out the door.

In the last scene we see that Jackie has traded places with his former mirror image.

Wonderful acting by Joe Mantell, who later appeared in another episode of The Twilight Zone.

8/10

The Twilight Zone: Where Is Everybody?

This is the very first episode of The Twilight Zone. Ever.

It launches with an intro by Rod Serling, in which he addresses potential buyers of commercial time. He relates what the show is about and gives a glimpse of some of the episodes to come, showing off some of the props to be used. He also boldly predicts that this is a high quality products. He turned out to be right, of course.

Where Is Everybody? is about a man walking down a country road and into an empty diner in which the music box plays at full volume and the coffee is still on the stove but nobody appears to be around. He assumes that somebody must be in shouting distances, so he gives his order anyway and starts talking away. One thing he announces is that he is not sure who he is, but he knows he is hungry and has a bit of money to pay for coffee and breakfast. He helps himself to a cup, throws a coin onto the bar and heads off down the road again.

The town he comes into is as deserted as the diner was. He tries and fails to find anybody in the shops. At one point he thinks he sees a woman sitting in a car and starts talking to her immediately, before realizing that it's a mannequin.

Not only does the man not know who he is, he also does not remember waking up. All he remembers is walking. Also, he feels he is being watched.

What is actually happening is he is an astronaut in training, confined in an empty room to test whether he can potentially stay sane locked inside a tiny aircraft. As he gets carried away on a stretcher, he starts talking to the moon he was supposed to travel to.

7/10

The Twilight Zone: The Mighty Casey

During tryouts for the Hoboken Zephyrs, the desperate team meets a left-handed pitcher named Casey. He has the strongest arm ever seen and pitches with unbelievable precision. The only problem is - Casey is a robot.

The coach - played by Jack Warden, who I can hardly remember as anything else than a baseball coach - and the man who built Casey decide to keep this little bit of information to themselves.

Alas, it had to come out eventually. When Casey gets hit in the head by a ball, the following check-up reveals that he is not human. A baseball official is called in and it is agreed that he would be allowed to continue playing if he is equipped with a beating heart.

When he returns to play he doesn't have the heart (Ha!) to strike out any of the opponents. He goes off to do charitable work.

5/10

The Twilight Zone: Deaths-Head Revisited

One Mr. 'Schmidt' (formerly an SS officer operating under the name Lutze) revisits the town of Dachau and the remains of one of the most infamous concentration camps. He goes through all the buildings, regarding everything with a happy sense of nostalgia.

What he does not expect is to meet the prisoners that have died there some 17 years earlier. The first of these is named Becker and Lutze assumes that he is a sort of caretaker of the site. Only briefly he wonders why the man hasn't changed since they last met.

It's the sound of what seems to be the wind that makes him nervous and he cannot seem to open the door again. Becker then informs him that he has to stand trial for crimes against humanity, the court entirely made up of the former inmates of 'Compound 6' of the camp Dachau. The verdict, of course, can only be 'guilty' and his punishment is insanity.

6/10

The Twilight Zone: And When the Sky Was Opened

Two astronauts, recently returned from a flight with an experimental plane called X-20 that mysteriously disappeared from radar screens for 24 hrs, meet in a hospital room where one recovers from a broken leg. One of them, Col. Forbes (Rod Taylor), remembers the journey and the following events quite differently. For one, there was a third member on that flight, one Col. Harrington, that has not only disappeared from yesterday's newspaper story but that the injured Major Gart has no recollection of.

The night before, Forbes and Harrington went to a bar, when Harrington suddenly started feeling peculiar, like he 'doesn't belong'. When calling his parents, he learns that they don't know him and he is not their son. Shortly after, he vanishes into thin air and nobody in the establishment remembers Harrington ever being there. In fact, nobody at all remembers any Harrington.

Eventually, the two remaining army men realize that they, too, 'don't belong'.

7/10

The Twilight Zone: Five Characters in Search of an Exit

An army major wakes up in unfamiliar surroundings with no memory how he got there. Worse even, he doesn't know who or where he is. The room he is in has no doors or windows, the only light source coming from high above his head.

Almost immediately he encounters other characters in the same situation - a clown, a ballet dancer (moving mechanically), a hobo and a bag piper. The major starts questioning the situation and looking for a way out.

Rod Serling makes an ominous appearance, looking over the edge of the pit, talking to the camera, telling us,

"We will not end the nightmare, we will only explain it, because this is The Twilight Zone."

Everyone tries to make the major feel more comfortable, explaining that they all suffer from neither hunger nor thirst and tell him that his efforts to get out are futile. They have themselves tried every conceivable option long ago. The newcomer then concludes that they are in hell.

The only break in their eternal boredom is an occasional ringing of a bell, so loud it makes their surroundings shake and hurts their ears. In the end, the five turn out to be toys at the bottom of a bin, collected for poor children as Christmas presents.

6/10

The Twilight Zone

This is happening.

I will re-watch all the episodes of the original Twilight Zone - in no particular order. Watch this space.