Twilight Zone Top Ten Episodes

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Top Ten Twilight Zone Episodes &
Top Five (Four-Episode) Collections

by Clay V. Lord

Rod Serling is perhaps the only television writer in history who could draw a crowd just strolling to the corner for a newspaper, and his fame and reputation as a writer was highly deserved. The Twilight Zone, his groundbreaking series that ran for 151 episodes from 1959 to 1964, included scores of classic episodes penned and introduced by Serling himself. In Serling’s world, morality is king, and everyone gets his just desserts. Often by means of a surprising ending with a significant plot twist, the evil reap their comeuppance, while the pure of heart are offered a second chance. Some episodes, in the process, come off as treacly, sappy, and sentimental; others are pointedly humorous or offer supernatural themes and encounters with aliens. When buying DVDs of the series, you’ll notice that -- more often than not – a disc is marred by haphazard selection, containing one or two classic shows and one or two clunkers. That’s why this page not only features the top 10 episodes from the show, but also the top 5 DVDs in terms of overall quality of selection. --Clay Lord, Lord Sites
 

The Top Ten Twilight Zone Episodes

1. To Serve Man

The Twilight Zone, Vol. 8
Writer: Rod Serling.
This show tops many a Zonephile’s list of the best ever. Has the inscrutable alien race of Kanamits descended to Earth to bring peace and prosperity to our world, or do they merely seek to satisfy their own hunger for conquest? The answer may lie in a mysterious book the Kanamits left behind, whose meaning must be deciphered from a cryptic language of runic symbols.

2. What You Need

The Twilight Zone, Vol. 17
Writer: Rod Serling.
This episode concerns the hazard-filled life of a sidewalk salesman with an unusual talent for selling each customer exactly what he needs to avert a coming disaster. When a street tough tries to muscle in on the salesman’s business, his greed is rewarded in typical Serling fashion.

3. The Silence

The Twilight Zone, Vol. 39
Writer: Rod Serling.
His gentleman’s club would be the ideal retreat for a wealthy businessman, if not for the boring, incessant prattle of one of the junior members. The businessman values his peace and quiet so much that he wagers $500,000 that the young man cannot keep silent for one year. Can a born blabbermouth keep quiet that long? To what lengths will he go to win the wager?

4. The Masks

More Treasures From The Twilight Zone
Writer: Rod Serling.
Phenomenal casting in this morality tale about a pack of selfish children eager for their old man to die so they can get their greedy mitts on his money. With Serling writing the script, you can be sure that when Daddy dies at the stroke of midnight, the kids will get a payoff they hadn’t bargained on.

5. You Drive

The Twilight Zone, Vol. 23
Writer: Earl Hamner, Jr.
Earl Hamner, Jr., creator of The Waltons, wrote several of the worst episodes in the Zone catalog, often with a down-home country theme. Still, Earl nearly redeems himself with this one. Standout character actor Edward Andrews made a career of playing sleazy villainous roles, and here he plays a man haunted and stalked by his own car after a hit-and-run accident. (We wonder if Stephen King paid Hamner a royalty after ripping off his idea in the novel Christine?)

6. Nick of Time

The Twilight Zone, Vol. 9
Writer: Richard Matheson.
Veteran sci-fi legend Richard Matheson wrote one of his best Zone scripts for this one. William Shatner stars as a man traveling with his bride; they develop car trouble and are stranded in a small town. Shatner starts feeding pocket change and questions about his future to a devil-headed fortune-telling machine in the diner. The devil responds with a chain of premonitions so uncanny that they threaten to relieve Shatner of his free will.

7. Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?

The Twilight Zone, Vol. 41
Writer: Rod Serling.
When a UFO crash-lands near a roadside diner, police are sent to investigate and capture any aliens who may be lurking about. A bus has made a rest stop at the diner. Could one of the bus passengers eating at the diner be an alien?

8. The Last Night of a Jockey

The Twilight Zone, Vol. 16
Writer: Rod Serling.
This is the only TZ episode that featured only one cast member. Think what you will about the checkered Hollywood career and storied personal life of Mickey Rooney; this episode presents a one-man tour de force of bravura acting. Rooney plays a washed-up jockey with two conflicting goals in life: to be reinstated as a jockey by the racing commission, and to be bigger than he really is.

9. Uncle Simon

The Twilight Zone, Vol. 19
Writer: Rod Serling.
“Bring me a cup of tea, very hot, in the bone china cup!” If you remember this snippet of dialogue, you recall Uncle Simon. His joyless niece hopes to have a life of her own after her overly demanding Uncle passes on (not from natural causes, by the way), but he leaves behind a will chock full of conditions that may forever stand in the way of her happiness. Great acting performances by Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Constance Ford, as well as an appearance by Robby the Robot.

10. Changing of the Guard

The Twilight Zone, Vol. 41
Writer: Rod Serling.
This show falls into the category of Serling’s more sentimental scripts, but a strong performance by Donald Pleasance in the lead role makes this a very emotionally powerful entry in the TZ catalog. Pleasance portrays a popular private-school teacher who is forced into retirement by an uncaring school administration. Not knowing what he will do with his life, he feels worthless and suicidal. However, sudden visitations from the spirits of students killed at war convince him of his enduring worth, both as an educator and as a man.

The Top Five Twilight Zone (Four-Episode) Collections

The idea behind this list is to help you purchase the best discs in the Twilight Zone catalog. The criteria apparently used by the DVD compilers at CBS Video is that every disc must contain a couple of prime cuts and a couple of not-so-good episodes. The five DVD collections below rank among the best in terms of overall strength of episodes. --Clay Lord, Lord Sites
 

The Twilight Zone, Vol. 8
To Serve Man (*****), Third from the Sun (*****),
The Shelter (****), The Fugitive (**)
To Serve Man is described above. There is no better episode in the series. Third from the Sun, shot in a bold film noir style, tells the story of two scientists who plot to flee the planet aboard an experimental spacecraft on the eve of nuclear holocaust. The Shelter delves into man’s inhumanity to man, and describes how the threat of imminent nuclear attack may bring out the worst in your friends and loved ones. In this episode, the only family on the block with a bomb shelter is beseiged by a mindless, bigoted mob consisting of their have-not neighbors. The Fugitive is a rather marginal episode, with J. Pat O’Malley as Old Ben, the fugitive ruler of another world. Old Ben can (and will) change into any form to avoid having to return to his boring old home planet.

The Twilight Zone, Vol. 9
Nick of Time (*****), The Prime Mover (*****),
It’s A Good Life (*****), The Mind and the Matter (***)
Nick of Time is included in the Top 10 Episodes above. The Prime Mover features Buddy Ebsen (aka Uncle Jed Clampett) as a telekinetic marvel who can lift automobiles (or move dice on a craps table) using only the power of his mind. It’s a Good Life stars Billy Mumy (of “Lost in Space” fame) as an evil child who will send anybody he doesn’t like (or who thinks bad thoughts about him) straight to the cornfield. A youthful Cloris Leachman plays the boy’s mother. Standup comic Shelley Berman has the lead role in The Mind and the Matter, as a misanthropic office worker who wishes everybody in the world was as easy to get along with as he thinks he is.

The Twilight Zone, Vol. 15
A Kind of Stopwatch (*****), The Midnight Sun (*****),
Escape Clause (****), Nervous Man in a Four-Dollar Room (***)
What if you could stop time for everyone else but yourself? That idea is explored in A Kind of Stopwatch. Our “hero” ends up robbing a bank and pulling a number of foolish pranks, before he runs into a spot of trouble. The Midnight Sun concerns the Earth’s orbit around the sun, and what might happen if that orbit changed. Lois Nettleton is great in the lead role. Escape Clause is played strictly for laughs. David Wayne (later the villain Mad Hatter on the Batman TV series) is funny indeed as a man whose deal with Satan to gain invulnerability leads only to boredom without end. Nervous Man in a Four-Dollar Room tells the story of a petty hood who’s afraid of his own shadow, until an aggressive alter ego emerges and takes control of his life and his criminal career.

More Treasures From The Twilight Zone
The Masks (*****), The Howling Man (****),
The Eye of the Beholder (****)
The Masks is another episode included in the Top Ten. The Howling Man is a retelling of the Pandora’s Box myth starring John Carradine. Lucifer himself is being held captive in a monastery. Could anyone be foolish enough to set him free? The Eye of the Beholder has very low replay value (the episode relies so heavily on its surprise ending, it’s rather pointless to view it once you know how it ends), but is spectacular on the first viewing. Look for Donna Douglas (aka Ellie May Clampett) in this tale of a botched plastic surgery intended to correct an unfortunate young woman’s hideous disfigurement.

The Twilight Zone, Vol. 11
The Fever (*****), The After Hours (****),
Living Doll (***), The Dummy (***)
This collection contains episodes with a common theme, the untimely animation of inanimate objects. In The Fever, an elderly man is pursued all over a Vegas hotel/casino by a money-grubbing, talking slot machine. The After Hours features Anne Francis as a department store customer who discovers that the saleslady who earlier sold her a thimble is actually a mannequin. Living Doll stars Telly Savalas (aka Kojak) as a mean stepfather. To his shock, his stepdaughter’s doll, Talking Tina, vows to kill him! The Dummy presents Cliff Robertson as an alcoholic ventriloquist who becomes convinced that Willie, his dummy, is alive.
 

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