Product Description
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For the first time ever, find all 156 complete episodes of Rod
Serling's groundbreaking series in one box set, packed with
exciting extras! Travel to another dimension of and sound
again and again through these stellar remastered high-definition
film transfers. Extras include the fascinating Serling
bio-documentary Submitted for Your Approval, compelling
interviews with the show's writers, the series' unaired pilot,
audio commentaries with Martin Landau, Leonard Nimoy, Cliff
Robertson and much, much more!
.com
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The Twilight Zone - Season 1 (The Definitive Edition)
Submitted for your approval: The Twilight Zone's inaugural
season, all 36 episodes complete with Rod Serling's original
promos for the following week's episode, not seen since their
original broadcast. To discuss television's greatest anthology
series whose title has become pop culture shorthand for the
bizarre and supernatural is to immediately become like Albert
Brooks and Dan Aykroyd in Twilight Zone: The Movie; a
can-you-top-this recall of famous shocks and favorite twists.
Several essential episodes hail from this season, among them,
"Time Enough at Last" starring Burgess Meredith as a bespectacled
bookworm who is the lone survivor of an atomic blast; "The
After-Hours" starring Anne Francis as a department store shopper
haunted by mannequins; and the profoundly disturbing "The
Monsters Are Due on le Street," in which fear and prejudice
turns neighbor against neighbor (and, by the by, whose alien
observers inspired Kang and Kodos on The Simpsons).
From an unsettlingly persistent hitchhiker to a malevolent slot
machine, The Twilight Zone's first season did plumb "the pit of
man's fears." One forgets how moving the series could be. Three
of this season's most memorable and enduring episodes are the
poignant and primal "stop-the-world-I-want-to-get-off fantasies,
"Walking Distance," "A Stop at Willougby" and "The
Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine," in which desperate characters seek
refuge in a simpler past. Serling's few stabs at comedy ("Mr.
Bevis," "The Mighty Casey") have not aged well, but the series
finale, "A World of His Own," starring Keenan Wynn as a
playwright whose fictional characters come to life, has a
brilliant capper. The episodes are more deliberately paced than
one might remember. Less patient younger viewers might be anxious
to get to the payoffs, but once they settle into the rhythm, they
will savor the literate writing and the performances by such
veteran actors as Ed Wynn, Everett Sloan, and Ida Lupino, and
newcomers such as Jack Klugman. The extras, including the unaired
version of the pilot episode, "Where is Everybody?", audio
commentaries and recollections, and a Serling college lecture,
truly take this six-disc set to another dimension. --Donald
Liebenson
The Twilight Zone - Season 2 (The Definitive Edition)
The middle ground between light and shadow just became a whole
lot sharper and detailed with this stellar five-disc set, which
compiles the entire second season of Rod Serling's classic
television series, The Twilight Zone, and gilds the whole package
by including a treasure trove of supplemental material. TZ's
second season (1960-61) is a stand-out in the series' history
thanks to its sheer number of memorable stories; among the
episodes that have achieved pop culture landmark status are the
chilling "Eye of the Beholder" (a disfigured woman undergoes
surgery to appear more "normal") and "The Silence" (Franchot Tone
wagers that Liam Sullivan cannot silent for a year); "The
Invaders" (Agnes Moorhead is pitted against tiny space
travelers), "Long Distance Call" (Lost in Space's Billy Mumy
converses with a deceased relative on his toy phone), and the
more light-hearted "Night of the Meek," in which department store
Santa Claus Art Carney gets a chance to fulfill the real St.
Nick's duties. As always, the combination of sharp, intelligent
scripting (mostly by Serling, but with notable contributions by
Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, and George Clayton Johnson)
and superb casting (guest stars include Cliff Robertson, Dennis
Weaver, Burgess Meredith, William Shatner, John Carradine, and
Don Rickles) produces television that remains as
thought-provoking and entertaining today as it was over 40 years
ago.
Though The Twilight Zone has received numerous home video
releases over the years, the aptly titled Definitive Edition is
arguably the finest presentation of this series to date. Each of
the episodes have been digitally remastered from original camera
negatives (even the episodes filmed on videotape look good) and
magnetic soundtracks; Serling's previews for upcoming episodes
and advertising "billboards" (sponsor spots) have also been
included, as have commentaries by Rickles, Weaver, Robertson,
Shelly Berman, and other performers. Clips of Serling on The Jack
Benny Show and in conversation with Mike Wallace, audio
interviews with cast and crew members by Twilight Zone Companion
author Marc Scott Zicree, radio adaptations of classic episodes,
and even the script for "Twenty-Two," complete with Serling's
notes, round out the set, which belongs in the collection of
anyone who's ever been enthralled by this landmark series. Now,
if only the same could be afforded to Serling's other
anthology program, Night Gallery… --Paul Gaita
The Twilight Zone - Season 4 (The Definitive Edition)
Despite major changes in personnel and the ill-advised switch to
a full-hour format, Twilight Zone (with "The" removed from its
title) began its fourth season on a promising note. Written by
series veteran Charles Beaumont, the premiere episode "In His
Image" maintained the high standards that Rod Serling had
established throughout the first three seasons, and the
story--about a man (George Grizzard) who builds an exact robot
replica of himself, with dire consequences--fit well into the
hour-long format that Serling reluctantly went along with.
Twilight Zone struggled with its expanded length, resulting in
some episodes that lack the consistent punch of earlier half-hour
episodes. Exhausted by three seasons of prodigious creativity,
Serling and Buck Houghton vacated their roles as producers (with
Serling's involvement limited to script feedback, writing nearly
half of the season's episodes, and on-screen hosting), and TV
veteran ert Hirschman became the new show-runner (departing
mid-season, he was replaced by Bert Granet), promising not to
tinker with the series' proven success. But Twilight Zone was
inevitably becoming a shadow of its former self, and the
involvement of proven TZ writers like Richard Matheson, Earl
Hamner, Jr., and Beaumont could not entirely compensate for
Serling's growing detachment.
Still, these 18 episodes include some fine examples of enduring
quality, such as Matheson's "Death Ship," starring Jack Klugman
and Ross Martin in a recurring nightmare scenario, and featuring
the same spaceship model used in the 1956 sci-fi classic
Forbidden Planet. Beaumont's "Miniature," starring Robert Duvall,
was the only hour-long episode pulled from initial syndication
(due to a plagiarism lawsuit that was ultimately dismissed), so
its inclusion here (along with color scenes from its eventual
syndication) is a welcome treat. Serling lampoons the medium of
television with "The Bard" (with an early appearance by Burt
Reynolds), and his teleplay for "On Thursday We Leave for Home"
is the season's highlight, ranking among Twilight Zone's finest
science-fiction episodes. It remained clear, however, that
Twilight Zone was past its prime, and when the series was renewed
for a fifth season in the spring of 1963, a return to its
original half-hour format was a belated step in the right
direction.
Of course, season 4's overall strengths and weaknesses won't
matter to collectors of The Definitive Edition DVD sets, and a
wealth of archival bonus features make this a must-have addition
to anyone's TZ collection. Image Entertainment and features
producer Paul Browstein deserve extra credit for their diligent
assembly of supplements that render all previous TZ releases
virtually obsolete. Nothing has been overlooked, from the
commentary (on "Death Ship") and interview clips by accled TZ
expert Mark Scott Zicree to the inclusion of a vintage TZ spoof
from Saturday Night Live, radio-show adaptations starring Blair
Underwood, Jason Alexander, Lou Diamond Phillips and others, and
a vintage Twilight Zone comic book, accessible on computers with
Adobe reader installed. There's even a brief Rod Serling blooper
taken from a scratchy 16-millimeter print, proving that no stone
was left unturned in making this a truly definitive TZ
collection. --Jeff Shannon
