I am honored to repost this essay from Horror Homeroom by Dawn Keetley. Horror Homeroom is a site that examines horror movies, television, and books. I have to say that Dawn Keetley is not only the author of this post and one of the editors of this site, but she is also one of the best English professors I have had the good fortune of knowing and taking classes with.
5 Twilight Zone Episodes That
Influenced Modern Horror Film
The Twilight Zone (1959-64) is not only one of the most acclaimed TV series but also one of the most influential on artists of all kinds, but especially on the creators of horror. The list below identifies five episodes that in my view powerfully shaped some of our best modern horror films. There are undoubtedly more, but this is a beginning.
- âMirror Imageâ (s. 1, ep. 21; February 26, 1960) and Psycho
Written by Rod Serling and directed by John Brahm, âMirror Imageâ stars Vera Miles as Millicent Barnes, a 25-year-old unmarried woman who is waiting for a bus to take her to a new job. She is clearly an unencumbered woman who is looking out for herself, not for a man. In one of the most enigmatic of Twilight Zone episodes, however, she soon catches a glimpse of her double in a bathroom mirrorâand then on the bus to the new job. A would-be fellow passenger in the bus depot strikes up a conversation with Millicent, but gets so concerned about her wild talk about doubles that before long, he has her carted off by the police.
Millicent in âMirror Imageâ and Lila in Psycho (both played by Vera Miles)
Despite the fact that Millicent is played by Vera Miles, who will soon star as Lila in Alfred Hitchcockâs Psycho (1960), she more closely evokes Lilaâs ill-fated sister Marion (Janet Leigh), a character who is similarly traveling, trying to improve her life, not securely ensconced in marriage and domesticity. Marion also has a troubled relationship with her mirror image. After she steals the money, she is unable to look at herself in the mirrorâher reflection detached. Her mirror image becomes, like Millicentâs, an uncanny double, one that prefigures her doom despite her decision to return the stolen money. Lila, too, almost becomes alienated from her mirror image, catching herself unawares in Mrs. Batesâ bedroom mirror and momentarily horrified by her âdouble.â In the end, though, Lila recognizes herself and retains her singular selfhood.
- âI Am the Night â Color Me Blackâ (s. 5, ep. 26; March 27, 1964) and Night of the Living Dead
The relationship between âI Am the Nightâ and Night of the Living Dead (1968) is a little more oblique than some of the other connections Iâm making here. This season 5 Twilight Zone episode, written by Rod Serling, concerns a townâs dark desire for vengeance against a man who was convicted (unjustly) of killing a bigot in self-defense. A minister (played by Ivan Dixon) preaches mercy to the townspeople, but they become one of those irrational mobs, driven by hate, that features more than once in The Twilight Zone. One shot of the mob closing in on the condemned man visually anticipates George A. Romeroâs mob of ghouls, and itâs hard not to believe Romero wasnât influenced by this episode in his shots of ghoul violenceâas well as by the angry mob in the season 1 episode âThe Monsters Are Due on Maple Streetâ (1960).
(Mob scenes in âI Am the Nightâ and Night of the Living Dead)
With the mob scene in âI Am the Night,â the episode shifts into the supernatural as the dawn fails to come and the town is plunged into an unnatural darkness that is clearly metaphorical, embodying the townspeopleâs hate; the episode then cuts to a scene of people huddled round a radio listening to reports of a similar âdarknessâ breaking out in other towns. It is stunningly evocative of the scenes in Night of the Living Dead in which the survivors in the farmhouse listen to reports on the radio of outbreaks of âmass murderâ and cannibalism.
- âNumber 12 Looks Just Like Youâ (s. 5, ep. 15; January 24, 1964) and The Stepford Wives
âNumber 12 Looks Just Like Youâ is a classic Twilight Zone episode written by John Tomerlin and based on a 1952 Charles Beaumont story, âThe Beautiful People.â It follows the struggles of Marilyn Cuberle against her societyâs decree that when she reaches adulthood she must undergo a transformation, becoming a specific numbered body type. (The episode also clearly influenced Scott Westerfeldâs 2005 novel, Uglies.) As in many Twilight Zone episodes, this plot device highlights conformity, as Marilyn vehemently insists she does not want the transformation: she doesnât want to look just like everyone else, and she thinks she looks fine as she is. Marilynâs alleged âchoiceâ to undergo the transformation is an illusion, however, and she is chased down a corridor and forced / coerced (we donât see how it actually happens) to endure the process. The change is not only physical but also mental: after the transformation, Marilyn gazes mindlessly and happily in the mirror at herself. (There may be an interesting contrast here with the alienating experiences that independent, rebellious women like Millicent in âMirror Imageâ and Marion in Psycho enjoy with their mirror images.)
(âNumber 12 Looks Just Like Youâ and The Stepford Wives)
The parallels with The Stepford Wives (1975) are obvious, although the experience is gendered in Ira Levinâs novel and Bryan Forbesâs film: the struggle for autonomy is not the individualâs struggle against society but womenâs struggle against men. The filmâs penultimate scene ends with the newly âtransformedâ Joanna staring blankly at the mirror brushing her hairâan evocation of Marilynâs final adoring and yet empty gaze at herself. Women who conformâto societal dictates, to men, to normative standards of beautyâenjoy a vastly more untroubled relationship with their mirrors, it seems.
- âStopover in a Quiet Townâ (s. 5, ep. 30; April 24, 1964) and The Cabin in the Woods
Written by Earl Hamner, Jr., âStopoverâ is in my view a seriously underrated episode and should rightfully appear in any top 10 list of Twilight Zone episodes. It opens with a young married couple, Bob and Millie Frazier, who wake up in a small town with no memory of how they got there. They wander around the town, which is utterly deserted, trying to figure out where they are, why no one is around, and how they can get away. They find and board a train with relief but, minutes after leaving, discover that the train has just circled back to the point of departure. At the end of the episode, a gigantic hand descends, revealing that the couple is merely a toy in the games of others. There is a reality behind their own reality of which they were profoundly unaware.
(The endings of âStopover in a Quiet Townâ and The Cabin in the Woods)
It is this ending of this episode in particular that marks its undeniable parallel to Drew Goddardâs Cabin in the Woods (2012), which similarly ends with a giant hand that utterly shifts the frame for characters and viewers. All the characters in Cabin in the Woods areâand always have beenâpawns in anotherâs drama. There is an earlier moment in âStopover,â too, when the couple sees a squirrel on a tree only to discover that it, along with the tree and the grass, are fakeâjust like the simulated  nature in Cabin in the Woods. (This scene also evokes the uncanny moment in M. Night Shyamalanâs The Happening in which the fleeing group encounter a house filled with plastic plants and fruit.)
As another aside, at one point in âStopover,â Millie and Bob wander into the empty town churchâa scene that anticipates the moment in Children of the Corn (1984) when Vicky and Burt arrive at a similarly deserted town and enter a similar eerily empty church. Both Vicky and Burt, like Millie and Bob in âStopoverâ and the characters in Cabin in the Woods, will be sacrificed to forces greater than themselves.
- âThe Trade-Insâ (s. 3, ep. 31; April 20, 1962) and Get Out
I have written elsewhere on the connection between the season 3 episode âThe Trade-Ins,â written by Rod Serling, and professed Twilight Zone fan Jordan Peeleâs Get Out (2017). (Peele is slated to helm an upcoming revival of the series for CBS All Access. The entire premise of the episode, which follows an elderly couple, John and Marie Holt, as they explore âtrading inâ their aging and sick bodies for new lifelike robot bodies, anticipates Get Outâs Coagula procedure, in which aging white people hijack young, healthy African American bodies. Reading âThe Trade-Insâ back through Get Out reveals the power and privilege inherent in such body-swapping technologies (something The Stepford Wives also puts front and center). Systemic power and its abuses is not what preoccupies The Twilight Zone, which focuses instead on love and the ethical choice John Holt confronts about whether he should enjoy a young pain-free body alone or remain in his aging one along with his wife. Institutional power and oppression shimmers into view, though, in light of Peeleâs revisionary film.
(The Holts look at the replicas in âThe Trade-Insâ and the Armitages party guests scrutinize Chris in Get Out)
Iâm definitely interested in hearing about what other Twilight Zone episodes you think influenced modern horror. I did write a post a little while ago about how the season 3 episode, âFive Characters in Search of an Exitâ uncannily anticipates the trope in recent horror film of characters waking up in a strange room with no idea how they got thereâCube (1997), Saw (2004), and, especially, Circle (2015).
Once again, thank you to Dawn Keetley and Horror Homeroom !
