The Twilight Zone - Season 4 The Definitive Edition Description:
Science fiction television program featuring tales of the unexpected.
Genre: Television
Rating: NR
Release Date: 21-AUG-2007
Media Type: DVD
- Amazon Sales Rank: #18979 in DVD
- Brand: Image Entertainment
- Released on: 2005-10-18
- Rating: Unrated
- Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
- Formats: Box set, Black & White, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
- Original language: English
- Number of discs: 6
- Dimensions: 1.30 pounds
- Running time: 1080 minutes
Customer Reviews:
Episode guide
#1 Two
Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery play the sole survivors of a nuclear holocaust.
#2 The Arrival
An airline official tests his theory that a newly arrived but totally empty plane is imaginary-with startling results.
#3 The Shelter
A neighborhood panics when they believe they are under a nuclear attack and attempt to invade the only bomb shelter on the block.
#4 The Passersby
A wounded Civil War soldier starts to believe that he and the people around him have already died.
#5 A Game of Pool
A pool master returns from the dead to play one last game with an eager young hustler.
#6 The Mirror
A dictator discovers a mirror that shows the faces of his assassins.
#7 The Grave
A hired gunman defies a Western outlaw’s warning that if he ever came near his grave he’d reach up and snatch away his life. Stars Lee Marvin, Strother Martin, Lee Van Cleef.
#8 It’s a Good Life
A six-year-old boy holds a town in terror with his powers to change or destroy anyone or anything at will.
#9 Deaths-Head Revisited
A former Nazi is tried by a jury of his own victims. .
#10 The Midnight Sun
The inhabitants of Earth prepare to meet their doom as their planet heads toward the Sun.
#11 Still Valley
A Confederate scout is given a magical book that could guarantee their victory.
#12 The Jungle
A former prospector is haunted in Manhattan by an African jungle beast.
#13 Once Upon a Time
A janitor puts on a helmet that takes him 72 years into the future. Stars Buster Keaton.
#14 Five Characters in Search of an Exit
Five people - a ballet dancer, a major, a clown, tramp and a bagpipe player - find themselves trapped in a featureless enclosure.
#15 A Quality of Mercy
A racist World War II soldier experiences the war in the body of a Japanese counterpart.
#16 Nothing in the Dark
Gladys Cooper plays an elderly woman locks herself in an abandoned building in order to avoid “Mr. Death.” Robert Redford also stars.
#17 One More Pallbearer
A rich man devices a scheme to get revenge on those who humiliated him earlier in life.
#18 Dead Man’s Shoes
A man steals who steals the shoes of a murdered gangster finds himself living in the dead man’s footsteps.
#19 The Hunt
A hunter and his faithful dog arrive at the gates of Heaven.
#20 Showdown with Rance McGrew
A cowboy star is haunted by the ghost of Jesse James.
#21 Kick the Can
A group of elderly people recapture their youth.
#22 A Piano in the House
A strange piano allows the listener’s hidden character to be suddenly revealed.
#23 The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank
When a young man steps out of his coffin at his own funeral the townsfolk grow to suspect that the devil has assumed the man’s body.
#24 To Serve Man
Apparently benign alien emissaries show mankind how to end the misery of war, plague and famine.
#25 The Fugitive
A magical old man delights the local children with his power to change his appearance.
#26 Little Girl Lost
A couple is awakened in the middle of the night by the cries of their six-year-old daughter who has fallen through a mysterious door into another dimension.
#27 Person or Persons Unknown
A man awakens one morning to find that no one recognizes him, not even his mother.
#28 The Little People
A space traveler terrorizes the tiny inhabitants of a space station into accepting him as their God, but when another space ship arrives the tyrannical man discovers everything is relative.
#29 Four O’Clock
To combat all that he considers evil, a cranky man decides to make every evil person two feet tall at exactly 4 p.m.
#30 Hocus Pocus and Frisby
No one believes a local story-teller who claims that he was kidnapped by aliens.
#31 The Trade-Ins
An elderly man has his mind transferred to a new body.
#32 The Gift
A small village becomes fearful of a crashed space traveler.
#33 The Dummy
A ventriloquist’s dummy takes on a life of its own.
#34 Young Man’s Fancy
A young bride is not happy when her husband attempts to win back the days of his childhood.
#35 I Sing the Body Electric
A widowed father buys his three young children an electronic grandmother.
#36 Cavender Is Coming
Carol Burnet plays Agnes Grep who gets a visit from an apprentice angel trying to win his wings.
#37 The Changing of the Guard
A teacher feels like his life is over when he is asked to retire.
Twilight Zone - Season 2 - Another Great One
The Complete Second Season of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone is now on DVD. This second season contains all 29 episodes on 5 disks. It is full frame and is about 900 minutes.
I don’t have a favorite season; there are great episodes from each. I am really enjoying entire seasons being released at once.
1) King Nine Will Not Return - A World War II captain wakes up in the desert, next to his crashed plane.
2) Man in the Bottle - A shop owner finds an old bottle which contains a genie which grants him 4 wishes.
3) Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room - A smalltime hood is ordered to commit a murder and when he looks into a mirror he sees himself with courage.
4) A Thing About Machines - A writer believes the machines in his home are against him.
5) The Howling Man - A man finds refuge in a monastery during a storm and finds an unusual prisoner.
6) The Eye of the Beholder - A woman goes through treatments to make herself normal so she can fit into society.
7) Nick of Time - A newlywed becomes obsessed by a fortune-telling machine when they are stranded with car trouble.
The Lateness of the Hour - A scientist creates robot servants and his daughter feels a little unusual.
9) The Trouble with Templeton - Templeton is an aging actor who longs for the old days when his wife was alive.
10) A Most Unusual Camera - A couple have stolen a camera that takes pictures of events just a few minutes into the future.
11) Night of the Meek - A drunkard Santa Claus discovers a bottomless sack of toys.
12) Dust - A peddler tries to sell a condemned man’s father a bag of “magic dust”.
13) Back There - A man goes back in time and realizes, he can’t change the future by changing the past.
14) The Whole Truth - A “Model A” automobile compels its owner to tell only the truth.
15) The Invaders - An old woman in an old farmhouse encounters tiny aliens in her attic.
16) A Penny for Your Thoughts - A bank employee flips a coin and when it stands on its end, he is given the ability to read minds.
17) Twenty-Two - Miss Powell has a recurring nightmare (”room for one more”) about room 22.
18) The Odyssey of Flight 33 - A commercial aircraft and its passengers travel back to prehistoric times.
19) Mr. Dingle, the Strong - Martians give Luther Dingle the strength of 300 men.
20) Static - Ed Lindsay hates television, so he gets his old radio out of the basement and it can receive programs from the past.
21) The Prime Mover - A man has the ability to control objects with his mind.
22) Long Distance Call - A boy finds he can communicate with his dead grandmother through his toy phone.
23) A Hundred Yards over the Rim - A man in the year 1847 moving west sets out to find medicine for his dying son and winds up in the future.
24) The Rip Van Winkle Caper - Three thieves put themselves into suspended animation for 100 years after stealing a million dollars worth of gold bars.
25) The Silence - A man is offered half a million dollars to remain silent for one year. The bet is taken and won but with a twist at the end.
26) Shadow Play - A man is trapped in a recurring nightmare where he tries to persuade those who are sentencing him to death that this is not reality.
27) The Mind and the Matter - After reading a book on the “power of thought” a man is able create the world exactly as he wants it.
28) Will the Real Martian lease Stand Up? - State Troopers follow the tracks from a frozen pond to a diner where they find a bus driver and his seven passengers but there were only six on the bus.
29) The Obsolete Man - In a state where religion and books are ban, a librarian is judged obsolete and sentenced to death.
Re-enter the Zone!
If you hopped on board for season 1’s definition edition, you probably don’t need much convincing to pick this one up either. It’s a great deal cheaper than season 1 (though there are less episodes in this season) but packs a lot of punch considering the high benchmark set for the show’s debut season. There are a great number of gems with very few clunkers sprinkled in.
Among the episodes collected here are two of the series’ most poignant social commentaries in “The Obsolete Man” (with Burgess Meredith) and “Eye of the Beholder” (probably the most infamous episode in all of TZ lore). To make things more varied, the second season also brought us some lighter fare like “Mr. Dingle the Strong” and “A Penny for Your Thoughts”. We also get the TZ debut of Shatner in “Nick of Time” and its companion piece “The Silence”, both notable episodes for containing no real supernatural elements yet keeping very much in the spirit of the Twilight Zone. And some of the best-loved episodes of all, the flawless “One Hundred Yards Over the Rim” (featuring audio commentary with star Cliff Robertson, Oscar winner for “Charly” and ‘Uncle Ben’ in “Spiderman”); “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” (a brilliant ensemble piece driven by atmosphere); and “Shadow Play” (one of the most overlooked episodes in the series).
Season two also brought about budget restraints, which lowered the total number of episodes and caused several to be shot on videotape. Few other shows could have gotten away with this approach, and the videotaped episodes include a heartwarming Christmas-themed “Night of the Meek” that sees Art Carney becoming Santa Claus and “Twenty-Two”, which suffers through probably the worst special effect in the history of television. If you haven’t seen it; I dare not spoil it for you.
Boasting remastered hi-def film transfers from original camera negatives and magnetic soundtracks as well as continuing the tradition of restoring the “Next Week” teasers from Serling as they belong in the broadcasts (even those that ended up with Serling holding a pack of Oasis Cigarettes and puffing away — priceless!), season 2 is yet another excursion into the Twilight Zone that will offer something that even diehards will not have seen or heard yet.
Commentaries include:
* Billy Mumy & William Idelson on “The Long Distance Call” (Videotaped episode. Mumy’s other TZ credit is as the legendary Anthony Fremont in “It’s a Good Life”, which he has recorded an additional commentary for to look forward to in season 3’s set. Idelson had acted in a season 1 episode but actually wrote this episode himself, though Charles Beaumont is credited with co-writing it — Idelson goes into a bit of detail in regards to this. Meanwhile, Mumy shares stories about his mother’s hesitance to let him star in such a morbid episode and informs us that he went to high school with ‘TZ Companion’ author Marc Scott Zicree himself!)
* Cliff Robertson on “One Hundred Yards Over the Rim” (Understated time travel episode — Oscar Winner Robertson’s performance is incredibly real here. His commentary is less than animated than the one mentioned above, but still enjoyable as he talks about the 9-page report on the character that he had written himself before shooting began, the “controversy” over the tophat he wore, and even lets us know he’s writing the script for “Charly 2″!)
* Dennis Weaver on “Shadow Play”
* Shelley Berman on “The Mind and the Matter” (Truly a ridiculous episode and, in true TZ fashion, becomes enjoyable for exactly that reason.)
* Donna Douglas on “The Eye of the Beholder” (Not the voice — except for some dialogue at the end that didn’t require her to be overdubbed — but the infamous face in this episode — and later Ellie Mae of “The Beverly Hillbillies” notoriety.)
* Don Rickles on “Mr. Dingle the Strong” (great to see the “Merchant of Venom” contributing an audio commentary)
Also included are original production slates for the 6 videotaped episodes. These are small videotaped clips of the guy with the production slate in hand, calling out the show name, production number, take and then “Action!” Might seem like a minor inclusion, but really helps lend credibility to a set that calls itself “definitive”. Really, it’s the little things that can make a huge difference. We get all of this content, plus the Mike Wallace Interview with Rod Serling (a marvelous piece originally available on one of the “Treasures…” discs), Serling appearances on “Tell it to Groucho” and “The Jack Benny Show”, another wave of TZ radio dramas & isolated original scores, plus a DVD-ROM script of “Twenty-Two” with Serling’s notes and a lot more audio interviews contributed by “TZ Companion” author Marc Scott Zicree all add up to make this the second installment of “Must-Buy TV”. Your wallet compels you!
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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 Herbert 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 acclaimed 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
