46 Fun Facts About Twilight Zone

In The Twilight Zone's 'The Howling Man', who is the prisoner the monks keep locked in a cell?

The Devil: the traveller who frees him later recaptures him, only for his housekeeper to open the door again.

In The Twilight Zone's 'The After Hours', what does shopper Marsha White discover she really is?

Marsha is a mannequin: the store's mannequins take turns spending a month among humans, and she overstayed hers after forgetting what she was.

In The Twilight Zone's 'Time Enough at Last', which actor plays bookworm Henry Bemis?

Burgess Meredith plays Henry Bemis, whose wife cruelly crosses out the text on every page of his books.

In 'To Serve Man', what does the alien book of that title turn out to be?

The book is a cookbook: the nine-foot aliens had promised to end hunger and war on Earth, and were fattening humans up to eat them.

What is the name of the towering alien race in 'To Serve Man'?

The Kanamits win humanity over by handing out cheap energy and turning barren deserts into farmland.

In 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet', William Shatner's character sees a creature doing what?

Robert Wilson sees a gremlin sabotaging the plane's wing, and after landing, as he is carried off, the camera shows viewers the torn engine housing no one else has noticed.

Which future Superman director directed the original Twilight Zone episode 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet'?

Richard Donner directed it, and William Shatner's Robert Wilson has just left a sanitarium after a breakdown that began on a flight, so his alarm looks like a relapse.

In The Twilight Zone's 'Living Doll', what is the name of the wind-up doll that torments Telly Savalas's character?

Talky Tina's sweet catchphrase turns into threats, and Erich finally trips over her on the stairs and falls to his death.

In 'It's a Good Life', where does six-year-old Anthony Fremont send people who displease him?

Anthony wishes them into the cornfield, so the townspeople hide their fear, think only happy thoughts and tell him everything he does is 'good'.

In 'It's a Good Life', in which fictional town has the rest of the world disappeared?

Peaksville, Ohio, is all that's left, and its people never learn whether the rest of the world was destroyed or the town was taken away.

In The Twilight Zone's 'Eye of the Beholder', what do the hospital doctors and nurses look like when finally revealed?

Pig-snouted, twisted humanoids surround a patient, Janet Tyler, who is beautiful by our standards; two actresses played her, one bandaged, one unmasked.

In The Twilight Zone's 'The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street', what first sets off the neighbours' spiral into paranoia?

A power outage sets the street on edge, and the twist reveals aliens on a nearby hill who cut the power so the humans will destroy themselves.

In The Twilight Zone's 'The Hitch-Hiker', what does Nan Adams finally realise about herself?

She has been dead since the accident: her car blew a tire in Pennsylvania days earlier, and the hitchhiker, apparently Death, is waiting for her.

In 'The Invaders', the tiny spacemen menacing Agnes Moorehead's farm woman turn out to be from where?

The 'invaders' are astronauts from Earth; Agnes Moorehead never speaks, and the only dialogue is the astronaut's radio warning about a planet of giants.

In 'Nick of Time', William Shatner becomes obsessed with what in a small-town diner?

The penny fortune-telling machine, a 'Mystic Seer' napkin holder, answers yes or no; Don's wife talks him into leaving, but the next couple at the table can't stop asking it.

In 'A Stop at Willoughby', where does the exhausted commuter find himself when his train stops?

Gart Williams wakes in a deserted 19th-century railway car at Willoughby, but in reality he jumped from the train, and his body leaves in a hearse from Willoughby & Son.

In 'Kick the Can', residents of which retirement home discover the secret of youth?

Sunnyvale Rest's residents turn young again by playing kick the can, but Ben, who refused to join them, is left behind begging to be made young too.

In The Twilight Zone's 'The Midnight Sun', what does Norma dream is happening to the Earth?

It is falling into the Sun in Norma's fever dream, but when she wakes, the planet is really drifting away from the Sun and freezing.

Who directed 'The Masks', the only episode of the original Twilight Zone directed by a woman?

Ida Lupino directed 'The Masks', about a dying man who makes his greedy heirs wear grotesque masks of their true natures until midnight.

What was the title of The Twilight Zone's first episode, broadcast on October 2, 1959?

'Where Is Everybody?' strands Earl Holliman's airman in an empty town that turns out to exist only in his mind.

Which composer wrote the guitar theme that The Twilight Zone introduced in season two?

Marius Constant wrote short stock music cues for CBS, and the network's music director spliced two of them together to make the theme.

Which composer wrote The Twilight Zone's original season-one theme, later replaced?

Bernard Herrmann wrote it, but for season two CBS rejected every new theme it commissioned, Herrmann's among them, and spliced together stock music cues instead.

What was the plot of the 1957 pilot pitch 'The Time Element'?

William Bendix played a man who dreams he is in 1941 Honolulu, trying to warn of the Pearl Harbor attack; CBS shelved it until Desilu Playhouse aired it in 1958, and its success got The Twilight Zone made.

Which legendary filmmaker did CBS reportedly offer The Twilight Zone's hosting job after its first season?

Orson Welles turned it down, and in a reversal CBS expanded Rod Serling's role, putting him on camera to introduce each story.

Which season of The Twilight Zone switched to hour-long episodes?

The fourth season, in 1963, ran hour-long episodes because CBS had dropped the show from its fall 1962 schedule, then brought it back mid-season to fill an hour slot.

What did Rod Serling do with his ownership share of The Twilight Zone after it ended?

He sold it to CBS, giving up the royalties he would have earned as the show kept airing in syndication.

What was Rod Serling's later anthology series, which debuted in 1969?

On Night Gallery, Serling lacked the creative control he had on The Twilight Zone, and producer Jack Laird overrode him.

In which upstate New York city did Rod Serling spend most of his youth?

Rod Serling grew up in Binghamton, and the hometown park in 'Walking Distance', with its carousel, is said to draw on the city's Recreation Park.

Which teleplay won Rod Serling his first Emmy?

'Patterns', a live Kraft Television Theatre drama about a boardroom power struggle, was so popular that it was performed live again a month later.

Which two producers made the 1983 film Twilight Zone: The Movie?

Steven Spielberg and John Landis produced it; Landis wrote and directed an original segment, while Spielberg chose to remake 'Kick the Can'.

Which actor was killed with two child actors in a helicopter crash while filming Twilight Zone: The Movie?

Vic Morrow and child actors Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen died while the film's opening segment was being shot, and its director and four others were later tried for manslaughter and acquitted.

Who developed the 2019 revival of The Twilight Zone for CBS All Access, alongside Simon Kinberg and Marco Ramirez?

Jordan Peele's and Kinberg's companies chose to end it after two seasons, though the streamer wanted more, saying they had told the stories they wanted to tell.

Disney's Twilight Zone drop ride is set in which fictional building?

The ride is set in the Hollywood Tower Hotel, a fictional hotel whose elevator passengers vanished when a violent storm struck the building in 1939.

Which Marvel team's ride took over the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror's building at Disney California Adventure in 2017?

Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout! reused the tower's drop-ride system, recasting the old haunted hotel as the Collector's fortress.

Which two writers joined Rod Serling on The Twilight Zone from season one?

Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson sold Serling stories and original scripts, and in season two the trio began admitting new writers such as George Clayton Johnson.

Which cost-cutting experiment did CBS impose on six season-two episodes of The Twilight Zone?

Shooting them on videotape made location shooting impractical, and the experiment was never tried again.

In 'Number 12 Looks Just Like You', what happens to everyone upon reaching adulthood?

Their bodies are surgically remodelled into chosen designs, and Marilyn, who refuses, ends up in the operating room anyway and comes out remodelled like everyone else.

In 'The Masks', a dying man forces his relatives to wear grotesque masks during which celebration?

Jason Foster makes his greedy heirs wear the masks until midnight on Mardi Gras, and when they unmask, their faces have taken on the masks' hideous features.

Which FCC chairman praised The Twilight Zone in his 1961 'vast wasteland' speech about television?

Newton Minow called The Twilight Zone 'dramatic and moving', then warned that such shows were the exception on a 'vast wasteland' of television.

In 'Walking Distance', whom does Martin Sloan meet when he revisits his hometown?

Martin Sloan finds himself as a boy on the park carousel, and his father, realising who he is, urges him to stop looking back and look ahead.

Which Twilight Zone episode was an Oscar-winning French short film?

'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' follows a condemned Civil War prisoner whose escape home to his wife turns out to be a fantasy in the instant before he dies.

Which hour-long sitcom replaced The Twilight Zone on CBS's fall 1962 schedule, only to be replaced by it in January?

Fair Exchange was cut back to half an hour and moved to a different time slot once The Twilight Zone returned.

In The Twilight Zone's 'The Obsolete Man', what job gets Romney Wordsworth sentenced to death?

Wordsworth is a librarian in a State that has banned books, and when he traps the Chancellor with his execution bomb, the Chancellor's cowardly plea gets him declared obsolete too.

In the radio-drama version of The Twilight Zone licensed in 2002, which actor takes Rod Serling's old role as narrator?

Stacy Keach recorded new opening and closing narrations because producer Carl Amari chose not to reuse Serling's, and each episode runs about 40 minutes.

Besides the Fourth of July, on which holiday does the Syfy channel traditionally run its marathon of The Twilight Zone?

New Year's: Syfy has even aired episodes of the show that were long left out of its syndication packages.

Who played the unmasked Janet Tyler in 'Eye of the Beholder'?

Donna Douglas played Janet unmasked, but Maxine Stuart voiced her under the bandages, since director Douglas Heyes cast those scenes by ear, for sympathetic voices.